


The Life of Death

by yellowturtle



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Divergent - Season 9, Canon-Typical Blasphemy, Canon-Typical Violence, Death!Castiel, Explicit Language, M/M, Major Character Death (keep in mind that the world ends in chapter one), Physics, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-29
Updated: 2014-11-29
Packaged: 2018-02-27 08:50:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 38,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2686673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellowturtle/pseuds/yellowturtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the world reverts back to its original state after the destruction of Earth, the apocalypse erased by God's renewed creation, Castiel survives despite it all. This is his story after the new beginning, as he is pulled apart by his duty to the reapers, the humans, God, and death, and the many lifetimes he spends to find Dean Winchester again.</p><p>What is the cause of Castiel’s perpetual resurrection? And if he keeps coming back, will he continue to do so beyond the reach of the universe?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The End of the World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **The Life of Death**  
>    **Art link** : <http://chargetransfer.livejournal.com/5590.html>  
> Author: [yellow-turtle](http://yellow-turtle.tumblr.com)  
> Artist: [chargetransfer](http://chargetransfer.tumblr.com/)  
> Co-Creators: [messier51](http://tmblr.co/mA5yNwzCnkuZOWol3o9dBqw), [defilerwyrm](http://defilerwyrm.tumblr.com)  
> Betas: [messier51](http://tmblr.co/mA5yNwzCnkuZOWol3o9dBqw), [theinevitableblastwave](http://theinevitableblastwave.tumblr.com)  
> Pairing: Dean/Castiel, [hover for spoilers](%20), [hover for spoilers](%20), Dean/Lisa (minor)  
> Rating: PG-13

“Heaven is gone,” Metatron confessed through the bubbles of blood in his mouth, his vessel’s clothes already streaked with the inescapable filth of purgatory.

And Castiel wasn’t afraid of the splintering worlds crushing him under their debris. His life meant nothing. _This_ was what he was afraid of.

“What do you mean, _gone_?” he roared, his sword digging deeper into the skin of Metatron’s throat, stalling for time. Maybe if he refused to accept it, heaven would still be there, just for a millisecond longer.

“The leviathan ate the whole cake.” Droplets of red landed on Metatron’s shirt collar with every garbled syllable. “No more souls, no more heaven. We had to run for our lives or they would've eaten us too.” And it sounded too close to the truth. Slumped against a muddy tree in the darkest reaches of purgatory, Metatron appeared sincerely humbled for the first time.

Castiel shook his head almost instinctively. “You’re a lying son-of-a-bitch.” The world had already lost too much too fast, and he had no choice but to refuse to believe.  “Tell me what really happened!”

Metatron’s throat bobbed against the sharp edge. “It’s true. Go see for yourself.”

“This is one more of your tricks. Nobody can verify what you…”

“There _is no more heaven!_ ” Metatron shouted, hysterical and desperate, and terrifyingly earnest. “We can’t be locked out of something that isn’t there!“

“Um, Castiel?” someone chimed in hesitantly from the edge of the clearing.

Castiel's head snapped towards the voice.

The reaper had opted to remain in its spectral form rather than a friendlier human one. Rogue reapers with vessels had been ruthlessly targeted, easy pickings slaughtered solely for the precious souls nestled inside their spongy flesh. Souls were a finite resource now. Fewer and fewer creatures were brave enough to exhibit human vessels, even superficially.

“I’m busy right now,” he growled in reply.

“It’s me, Tessa,” she said, unruffled by the naked threat in his voice. “You met me before, remember?”

Castiel squinted at her. Whoever she was, she did look like Tessa.

“Tessa is dead.”

She nodded as if his comment had been expected. “It’s a bit complicated. I can explain later. But right now I’ve come to take you to heaven.”

Metatron let out a small gasp of surprise. Castiel squinted at her. “Why?”

In the wispy, swirling plumes of her face, he saw a sad smile. “What if I want to help you out of the goodness of my heart?”

“There is no goodness left anywhere.”

The smile fell. “I can’t argue with that. But I have reason to believe you'll follow me. What you do next is up to you.”

Castiel’s grip on his captive’s collar tightened in frustration. In spite of his misgivings, he knew he couldn’t turn her down. There was the infinitesimal chance that he might finally, finally see _him_ again, after so many years, and he had always been a damned fool when it came to Dean Winchester.

The scribe of God slipped into the cold mud, his legs too weak to prop him up against the grey tree trunk. A thin sliver of bluish grace peeked out of his neck wound. Every angel still alive was keen on waving his head on a spike, and he would likely be dead within a day or two at most.

He nodded at the reaper. “Show me.”

The entity claiming to be Tessa guided him along a winding path far from heaven's main gates. According to her, the bloodbath at the usual entrances only intensified with each passing hour. The trail was nonexistent to Castiel’s untrained eyes but she advanced purposefully, and he followed her through the underbrush.

“This must feel like a downgrade,” she pointed out, breaking the awkward silence. “Your kind is so used to flying straight in.” Her voice sounded friendly and soothing, the closest thing to relief Castiel had experienced in God knew how long. He felt grateful despite himself.

But Castiel had never truly mastered the art of small talk. He saw no use for it, especially during times like these. “Did you know?” he asked instead.

“Uh,” she hesitated. “About the end of the world, you mean?”

“How did no one see it coming? The humans, heaven, hell, all in the dark? And Death too?” he pressed. “It doesn’t make sense.”

She shrugged her spectral shoulders. “Look, some things were meant to be. Nothing could’ve prevented the big one, not even rebels like you. My boss knew something bad would hit us soon. He personally kept watch on the skies, and even _he_ didn’t see it coming.”

An untrustworthy reaper wearing a stolen name wouldn’t reveal any information to him, of course. He'd always asked questions without getting answers, far before the world had ended. He didn't see why things would change now.

"Castiel," she said softly. "Were you there? When Earth died?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I saw it."

Castiel shrunk back into somber silence, and none of her well-intentioned overtures could pull him out.

The final stretch was spent in complete quiet, "Tessa" gracefully floating on while Castiel picked his way through broken rock. “Ah, this is it,” she said with obvious relief. Castiel saw absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Thinning trees. A hill. More rocks.

Then the hill began to glow with unmistakable power.

“Here we go.” She politely offered an immaterial hand for him to hold.

As Dean would’ve eloquently put it, Castiel wasn’t a dumbass anymore. He could see the nice reaper’s trap coming from a mile away. Warily, he stepped through the jagged fissure in the fabric of his old home, one of his hands loosely cradling her skeletal fingers, the knuckles of the other white around the handle of his sword. He prepared for the worst.

A wave of discomfort hit him square in the chest, almost knocking him over.

In his first panicked moment he imagined a deadly spell, some kind of dizzying magic. Everything was… wrong. Too shallow? Too brittle? 

No, it wasn’t a trap, he realized with sickening dread.

He stood in _heaven_.

It hurt his mind when he stared at the grass too long. The trees looked fragile, paper thin, on the verge of collapse. The sky was an odd pallid color. And the people…

“It’s empty.” 

There were no souls in heaven.

Tessa’s head darted around anxiously. “I don’t know, there might be a few chompers left. What they say about leviathan eating angels is true, by the way. I’ve seen it.”

Castiel barely registered her warning. He turned his back and expertly jumped through sheaves of withered memories—even without wings, he _was_ still an angel—until a familiar sight stopped him mid-leap.

“Nice digs,” Tessa complimented from a way behind. He had vaguely hoped to lose her. “Was it the Winchesters’ hide-out?”

The shine of the wood dulled by the seconds. The titles on the spines of the ancient tomes faded under his lightest touch. He dipped his fingers into a glass of whiskey. His hand came out dry.

Gone. All gone. The herds of souls bottle-necked into the dripping black maw of the wolves, bleating for help in their gilded cages. Billions upon billions upon billions devoured, slaughtered, ripped to shreds while Castiel scratched futilely against the other side of the wall. The last uncorrupted vestiges humanity had petered out, and everyone was too busy massacring each other outside the gates to notice it.

“This is… a ruin… a rotting corpse. Metatron was right. We can’t be locked out of something that no longer exists.” He choked on emptiness. He couldn’t breathe. ‘ _Maybe angels don’t need to breathe_ ,’ someone repeated over and over in his mind, pummelling into his skull like water on an open wound.

“The shell remains for now,” Tessa explained reverently. “The molecules still remember, at least until the fall of the other realms pulls them apart. I’m really sorry.”

"No. You're not sorry. You only think you know what it means."

Tessa’s lips pressed into a thin line.

She contemplated the fading mirage of a stranger’s home. She carefully picked up a leather-bound journal and let the weight of it rest in her palm. The exhaustion that suddenly fell on her could not be feigned. “Yeah, maybe I can’t know,” she admitted. “Not like you. I’ve never quite… let myself get attached. And, well. You’re the last angel who will ever lay eyes on heaven.”

The last…

The staircase moved unsteadily under his feet. A door opened before his eyes. The sky stretched vacantly  above his head. He stumbled and blindly broke his fall on the hood of a black Chevrolet Impala built in 1967 AD. A hand-shaped patch of metal and paint peeled off when he straightened. It caught on his skin; under his skin. It caught on the gulf of loss opening inside him, and deteriorated into nothing. The shell remains for now, Tessa had told him. Only for now. 

The universe would forget them. It would forget _him._ Finally, the last stitch that held Castiel’s world had been cut.

“Dean,” he whispered. His voice tripped on it. He shattered from the fall.

“I was the one who reaped him,” she admitted quietly, keeping her distance from the lunatic staring intensely at his own empty hand. “I'm not sure if it matters, I just thought maybe you’d like to know.”

“Did he say anything? Do you remember?” He felt numbed, as hollow inside as his old home. Had heaven ever been his home? Had the bunker?

She smiled again, just as sad as the first time. It seemed so long ago now. “Frankly, he was an even bigger pain in the ass than usual. He was screaming his head off, something like, ‘Why does it have to be now? Why are you taking me now, you reaper piece of crap? It wasn’t long enough, we didn’t have long enough,’ and on and on in the same vein, all the way to heaven.”

Castiel sunk to his knees.

He did not cry. Angels didn’t cry.

_“This one.” Castiel pointed at the coffee cup placed on the far right of the line of mugs. “I like this one the best.”_

_In the boy’s deep concentration, he had altogether abandoned his leather chair and parked himself directly atop the illuminated map. He stared at the chosen coffee as if it were an old nemesis of his. “That one's cream and double sugar. You've got bad taste in coffee,” he announced gravelly._

_Sam rolled his eyes. “Don't listen to him, Cas, we like you just the way you are.”_

_“Black! Hunters drink it black, Sammy!”_

_Castiel took a careful sip from the mug on the far left. “Don't get me wrong, this is good too. But it's a little too bitter, don't you think?”_

_“You're a terrible human.” He snatched the offensive coffee from Cas’ hands and poured its remains into his own mouth as an act of revenge. “And by that I mean you've got defective taste buds.”_

_“He's not gonna agree with you about everything just because he's in love with you,” Sam mumbled under his breath, burying his nose in his laptop screen._

Castiel stayed in heaven despite Tessa’s forceful objections. He wished to fade along with his reason to live. She ultimately gave in, mumbling something that sounded like “melodramatic” and “stubborn” before closing the door behind her.

The angel was too lost to continue the fight. This time he would pick something that tasted a little like peace. Choosing Dean had always meant the opposite. It meant war. It meant fear. It meant losing everything.

On the first day he sat in the bunker quietly.

On the second day he found the strength to walk. He visited the greatest hits of Sam and Dean’s memories. Some were completely disparate and some overlapped, enveloped in the dirt-coated glow of their nomadic childhoods, diners with greasy counter tops and plastic menus, the same blue bicycle leaning against a dilapidated tool-shed in two separate heavens, Bobby Singer’s dusty salvage yard baking under a coat of summer sun, a student bar in Palo Alto, Lisa Braeden’s kitchen, a veterinary clinic, park benches…

Park benches?

Castiel sat on the bench. If he bowed his head just so, he heard the sound of children playing, saw a young man with too much courage and too little hope, and a seed of something like trust beginning to bloom in his troubled eyes. Castiel hoped the young man had found respite in the end, if briefly. Castiel had. In its own way, there was a quiet triumph in knowing that everything he cared about had been taken from him and there was nothing left that could still hurt.

On the third day he found Ruby’s knife on the floor of the Roadhouse. Further rummaging revealed an angel blade abandoned in a puddle of congealed black goo and booze, six guns of various sizes, hurriedly cobbled ingredients for a witch spell, and two empty tubs of Borax. The labels blurred when he picked them up, but he thought he smelled the sharp tang of the leviathan repellent. The angel blade seemed to be an exact replica of his own, even when he compared them side to side. He assumed this was the spot of his friends’ final stand. Castiel wished he’d fought by them. Mostly he wished he could say goodbye. Most of all he wanted to see Dean’s face one last time, wanted it so much it made his hands shake and his borrowed eyes ache with unshed sorrow.

On the fourth day the memories became edgeless and indistinct. Solid objects turned into misshapen blobs of colors, and horizons dimmed into white. He doubled back to what used to be his favorite piece of heaven. The boundaries between objects were a bit firmer there, but the kites had fallen to the ground. Nobody to man them and no wind to make them soar. He stepped on one of them and only noticed from the yellow and orange clinging briefly to his shoes.

On the fifth day individual heavens started to collapse. He guessed that the first few casualties belonged to the initial wave of devoured victims. Dean and Sam’s crumbled almost at the exact same time. They died early. The leviathan held grudges.

On the sixth day he dizzily dragged his body through the few blurry crumbs of heaven that were left. The white sky chased him in every direction.

On the seventh day Castiel stopped. He let the white engulf him. He welcomed death.

On the eighth day he gasped awake.

“ _See, this is the earth.”_ He would pick up an object, preferably spherical. Perhaps an empty plate or a cup. “ _The earth is the center of the surrounding dimensions because it's the provider of soul-based energy. And these,”_ he would put three or four tightly balled-up napkins around the edge of the earth, “ _are the satellite realms that feed on souls. That means hell, purgatory, and so on. But what if your world is destroyed?”_

He would fish out a glistening ice cube from a drink. “ _It’s small compared to the earth, don’t you think?”_ he would murmur pensively. “ _It doesn’t look like it could shatter it. But with enough velocity, anything can. I talked to many people, angels, demons, everything in between, and they agreed that the meteor literally materialized from the void. No power foresaw its coming before it was too late. Isn’t it strange?”_ He would hit the plate or cup with the ice cube, producing a thin sound completely unlike the furious immensity of the end.

A cup would work better, he decided. He would have used a cup. Marbles were ideal, but they weren't likely be on hand.

“ _Remember, this dimension is holding the other dimensions apart in space and time. It is necessary for their stability. If we remove the earth and its residents, it leaves a hole in the fabric of the universe.”_ He would take the cup away, and nudge the napkin balls a bit if they didn’t roll close enough to each other. “ _Without earth’s pressure acting as boundaries, the other realms gravitate into the hole. By the time their edges collide, they’ve gathered too much momentum to stop.”_ He would force the napkins balls together with his hands. “ _No, they don’t really flatten in real life, I’m just trying to help you understand. It’s more that they… get erased altogether. They try to occupy the same space, and the overlap results in the different dimensions cancelling each other out like acids and bases. The process was accelerated in heaven because...”_

A long, wistful pause.

“ _The leviathan took advantage of the pandemonium to smuggle themselves into heaven. I don’t… I don’t know how they… Um. No one understands how they got in. But they did. And they… because the souls disappeared, which is the power source creating the individual heavens to begin with, heaven technically stopped existing. What’s left is the exoskeleton. The shell.”_ He’d rip a napkin into shreds. “ _This isn’t really a ball anymore, is it? It’s not really heaven. It’s an echo that stays behind even though the supporting structure, the… the things that were generating… that were holding it together are taken away. We don’t know how long this echo could’ve stood on its own, because the pieces are defenseless against the pull of the vacuum. Heaven collapses first. The rest will follow until nothing is left.”_ He would sit back, gesture at the little model of paper and ice. “ _Do you get it now?”_

This was how Castiel would’ve explained the end of the world to Dean if he were still alive.

He struck the chains apart with the handle of his blade, the demonic material offering no resistance. Castiel was still an angel. He must not forget. Too easy to forget nowadays, when he'd lost his usual reminders.

The demons must have fled the torture racks upon spotting the intruder, or else had long ago scurried away from hell's ever-shrinking boundaries. He couldn't decide whether hell's destruction was a good or bad thing.

He crouched next to the liberated soul. “It's alright. You're free now,” he murmured soothingly. He tried to mimic the calming tones of Tessa's voice without much success.

The warped, broken, and blackened hand gripped the fraying edge of Castiel’s coat. Her empty eye sockets pointed vaguely in his direction. She opened her toothless mouth and managed to croak out a feeble, “Help.”

“They won't hurt you anymore, I promise.”

“Please kill me.”

He almost dropped his blade in horror. “No! I can heal you,” he pleaded. “Look, I'll take your pain away.”

He extended two fingers to her forehead and she caught them in her rotting palm, her burnt nails chipping and crumbling against the barrier of his rigid flesh. “Kill me. Make it end...” she gurgled.

From the fresh holes in her jaw, a few droplets of drool and blood spattered onto Castiel's coat.

Castiel ran.

His arrogance must be punished one last time, he supposed. Who was he to crash through this foreign domain, dreaming of saving warped half-souls from a torment they could never leave recover from? What did he expect to accomplish with empty heroics? They all knew him. Every demon, every human. They knew what he'd done, and that he always, without fail, destroyed everything he touched. He couldn't truly heal them. He'd never been able to save them before, he wouldn't start now.

Souls were the only commodity left, and soon the fleeing hordes of demons and monsters snatched them up quickly, one by one, as Castiel averted his gaze.

Even with the repeated assurance that no harm would come to him, the reaper kept his hands raised in the universal sign for surrender. It was probably because of the impressive amount of blood on the trenchcoat. “She’s dead. She’s been dead for a while now. I can’t help you,” he blurted.

“Are you certain? Are you absolutely...”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” Castiel said. He felt as if he should say something more in her memory. Maybe his lack of surprise was disrespectful.

Tessa—or at least the reaper pretending to be Tessa—was kind and sure, the last nice thing he remembered coming across. She implored him to escape with her. She wanted him to live. She knew of Dean's existence, and that he wasn’t just an illusion driving Castiel to madness.

So _of course_ she was gone too.

“Why are you looking for her?” the reaper continued warily. “Not that I’m judging, but you’re not just any run-of-the-mill angel.”

Most of the blood on Castiel’s clothes belonged to Castiel himself, but it did look very intimidating.

“I wanted to ask Tessa why I've survived.” Tessa wasn’t supposed to be alive either. It seemed like the only place to start.

The reaper scoffed. “Get in line, pal. She didn’t know, and the rest of us don’t know, and I can’t guarantee that Death understood what went wrong with you. You’ll need to go higher up the food chain for answers.”

Years ago, he'd been told to find a cause, any cause, and to serve it. Finding answers was the only tangible thing for him to hold onto.

Castiel sighed. “Fine. Let me talk to your boss, maybe he’ll sort this out.”

“I can't do that,” the reaper countered instantly, all hesitation gone.

“Heaven _caved in_ , I felt myself die with it, and I’m still here! It's not the first time. Didn’t Death notice? Something is… is broken in me. I was obliterated by leviathan and archangels, I survived the destruction of earth, even with my grace cut out I still I couldn’t...”

The reaper crossed his arms. His face was unreadable. “I can't find him, Castiel. Stab me in the face all you want. He’s not coming for you or for anyone else.”

“I remember a woman in a white dress,” the demon said slowly, his gaze lost in the fast approaching void.

Their measly group consisted of three reapers, an angel, a demon, and him. Curled up in a nook of hell, hiding from the white, they were now equals. Were there other enclaves littered around the universe? Tiny survivors scurrying towards whatever corners of reality they could reach, running fruitlessly from oblivion as Castiel had run in heaven? It didn’t matter so close to the final days, and yet he hoped. Old habits died hard.

“She had flowers in her hands. Pink lilies. I don’t remember her name, or even her face, really, but out of that whole jumble of torture in my noggin she’s the one thing left that’s pretty.” The reapers nodded as if they understood. The angel looked a bit lost.

Black smoke swirled gently, and its proximity with naked grace brought Castiel back to simple days of distinguishable right and wrong. He’d pulled the righteous man up, up, away from damnation, demonic claws raking uselessly through his wings, triumphant and unable to save anybody at all.

The demon turned to Michrathon, a seasoned warrior. Castiel didn’t know him very well. “How 'bout you, Feathers?”

“Well… I never met God, of course. But before the pointless infighting, his presence could still be felt in heaven. I’m sure you remember what I mean, brother. We were… content? Complete. We were complete. I’ve never felt like that since.”

The reaper named Hakan shook his head. Where the angel had been nostalgic, he was angry. His wound was fresher. “We always said that our boss would never leave us like your father did, but he completely vanished. No goodbye, no explanation. He wouldn’t be able to help us anyway. I shouldn’t care.”

“I don’t think he left us willingly,” the reaper named Bruna interrupted with agitation. “I think maybe he isn’t eternal after all, and something bad happened to him. Maybe the destruction of Earth has injured him.”

The great horseman didn’t seem the type to abandon ship during times of trouble. Perhaps it was possible to kill Death? One thing was certain, if he’d severed contact from the reapers, he would never agree to meet up with the crazy wannabe-god from the last aborted apocalypse just to answer a couple of questions.

No, it didn’t matter now. Nowhere left to go.

“What about you, brother?” Michrathon asked, just a tad too eager, trying not to stare at Castiel like a curiosity. “What is your favorite memory?”

“Um, humanity,” he mumbled, his mind far away.

“Nah, that’s a total cop-out,” the demon said amiably. “You gotta elaborate.”

“Dean Winchester.”

There were a few eye-rolls, exasperated sighs, and a barely muffled groan.

“What is it with Dean friggin’ Winchester?” Bruna muttered.

“I know, right?” Michrathon muttered back.

Castiel felt the corners of his mouth curl up. Imminent doom was quite effective at quenching old resentments.

“You have a half-forgotten white dress,” he said quietly. “And you have your lost leader and purpose, and you have an absent Father. All I’ve got is a human who died a long time ago. We’re mourning our bad choices together.” He paused. “Mine are exceptionally bad, I’ll admit.”

One of the reapers let out a sad chuckle. The rest of them looked grave. Castiel tried not to begrudge their pity.

“Do you think he was worth rebelling for?” Michrathon asked bitterly. From resentment or anger or simple fatigue, Castiel didn’t know.

“Well, at the time I thought Michael would kill me on the spot. I might have reconsidered if I’d known,” he joked feebly.

Besides, he hadn't rebelled entirely for Dean. Not back then. That had come later.

The demon hesitated for a second or two. “Did Dean love you back?” he asked with a gentleness Castiel would never have thought possible for one of his kind. Even here, even now, he could still learn something new.

The abyss engulfed hell just as it had eaten heaven away, indifferent to the pleasure or suffering of its inhabitants. Castiel stared into it silently. He wanted very badly to die.

“ _Don’t you think it would be better… easier… for you if you'd picked someone else?” Castiel murmured, eyes downcast. Someone who wasn’t a damaged old angel. Someone who didn’t need second and third and fourth chances. Someone who had never hurt the ones he loved beyond repair, and who had committed no crimes to tally the marks. Someone unblemished and human and deserving._

_Slumped sleepily on a kitchen stool, chewing on a mouthful of waffle, the boy frowned back in puzzlement. “Why would I wanna do that?”_

“ _Aaaaaw,” his brother interrupted from the door. “You guys are so cuuuute.”_

_A syrupy fork hurdled through the air towards Sam's precious hair._

Castiel had wondered what would happen if he survived after hell, but he had been too distracted to linger upon those fears. It seemed too awful to be possible.

As usual, he was wrong. Nothing was too awful to be possible.

The universe ran out of ideas, lazily spitting him back out on a small chunk of the barren ruins of earth. Finally, truly alone.

_His faith made him look so beautiful under the dirt._

“ _Cas, we’re getting out of here. We’re going home.” He uttered these words with such conviction that Castiel almost believed them. If circumstances had been different, the tiny human caked with mud would have been followed anyplace, anytime, to the ends of the very world._

The notion of wingless time travel was completely laughable. He attempted it with the desperation of a drowning creature, scrabbling back ungracefully, anchoring himself on the memory of a face. The enormous strain shattered him to pieces almost before he started. The following resurrection felt like a warning, as if someone had whispered a threat in the nape of his neck, ordering him not to try again unless he wanted to suffer a fate worse than the present. He decided not to try again.

“ _Cas, no. You’re not strong enough,” he implored. Sometimes he forgot that Castiel was an angel, and he was just a man. Castiel never forgot, not even for a moment. Those green eyes wouldn't let him._

It wasn’t fair to remember the loss of an entire world through the memories of one human. Dean would not have wanted that. Castiel felt guilty and almost helpless as the vast field of his past narrowed into a single sharpened point. There had never been a day when Castiel wasn’t utterly consumed by the epicenter of his regret. There had been nothing before, and nothing after.

He walked on a pulverized shard of the small blue planet until he knew the texture of every pebble. Memories haunted his steps.

“ _I'm hunted, I rebelled, and I did it, all of it, for you,” Castiel growled. How could he have believed, even for an instant, that such an insignificant being was worthy? “And you failed. You and your brother destroyed the world. And I lost everything for nothing. So keep your opinions to yourself.”_

He stabbed himself in the chest again, and again, and again. He stabbed himself in the throat. He stabbed himself in eye. In the brain. In the gut. In the forearm and thigh. He watched his grace bleed out sluggishly. He woke up every time, inexplicably whole. With nothing else to do to pass the time, he mechanically continued to die. Slowly, each bloody rebirth left him weaker, his hands shakier, his chest shallower, and his mind unhinging itself from its allocated slot a few degrees more. The bite of the sword became synonymous with momentary relief, and eventually he could not tell the difference between the two.

Once in a while the flat surface under him disappeared, swallowed by stars. He didn’t understand the crawl of time anymore, but he remembered many horrid blinding deaths that had burned instead of bled. When later, he awoke on a different flat surface with the sword in his limp hands, he would begin again. And again.

He waited patiently for the day he would stay lost inside the fleeting oblivion. The empty husk of Jimmy Novak’s skin and bones would rest uncaring, filled with quiet and light. That body had never belonged to him anyhow. He had stolen it. He should give it back.

Angels didn’t dream, and he was grateful for at least that.

“ _I’m sorry, Dean,” Castiel said over his shoulder. The strain of the leviathan had cracked his lips, and made it hard to talk. He silently hoped purgatory’s torrent would leave his body intact. Without it, the frightened young souls of his friends wouldn’t be able to gaze upon Castiel at all. Perhaps they would salt and burn this body and let his molecules rest in the cool harbor of the earth. It would be a better end than seeing it ripped to shreds by the Old Ones. Better than he deserved._

Castiel hurt.

Nothing stayed beautiful and everything hurt. Any beauty, any glimmer in the horror, became trampled and sullied once unearthed. Any softness and innocence was born to be broken, snapped like brittle cartilage in hungry hands. Nothing beautiful remained except the vivid memory of a treasure forever lost, a brand seared in a forever screaming mind.

And everything hurt.

Everything hurt.

_He began to cry._

“ _Did I do something wrong? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Castiel whispered, terrified. His hands jerked back from skin as if burned by it. He curled his fists around his sides, afraid to move, to break anything more than he already had._

“ _No.” He buried his head into Castiel’s shoulder. He tried to go on, but his words were interrupted by uncontrollable sobbing. The water and salt seeped through Castiel’s crisp white shirt. “I just…” he managed to bite out with difficulty. His breath was warm against the angel’s neck. “I’m just not used to… to getting what I want.”_

_He sniffed, and hid his shaking lips behind the back of his hand. Through the blur, his eyes had never been so clear. He looked impossible, and perfect. For just an instant, it was all perfect._

“Let me die!” Castiel begged.

The universe did not answer.

“ _No, it wasn’t long enough,” he mouthed disbelievingly, eyes locked on Castiel’s face. His thrashing hand tried to bridge the distance and fell short. “It wasn’t long enough. Please...”_

“CASTIEL.”

The voice snaked into his deepest reaches, gripped him, and forced him out of his vegetative state. He blinked like a newborn animal. There had been nothing new to see or touch or hear. There had been _nothing_.

“Dean?” he croaked, his throat fissured from silence.

At first it didn’t surprise him to see the blurry outline of Dean Winchester crouching next to his wasted body. After what he had endured, it was only right to see the one thing he wanted staring curiously at him. He was Job, he was Raphael, he was every downtrodden thing waiting for the suffering to end. And there it was. Paradise at last.

He remembered exactly where this particular Dean sat in his memories. They had shared a small moment of calm before the angels cut their trails of fire in the night sky. Dim neons glinted through the pearls of condensation on his beer, lingered on the softness in his eyes, and this was the image Castiel had clung to when he was hungry and cold and far from home.

The Dean in front of him was plucked from that exact place and time, Castiel was certain. He looked identical and lovely down to the curve of every cell.

“RISE, CASTIEL,” Dean... demanded.

That was wrong.

No, it couldn’t be.

He wore the same face and the same voice, but he was too sure. Placid. _Commanding_. Castiel screwed his eyelids shut. He understood now.

Why would the universe dangle the only thing he wanted in front of his eyes? To crush what was left of him, of course. The cruelty of it didn’t particularly surprise him either. Dean was gone, lost like the world they belonged to, lost from the first brush of fingers, lost from the first obstinate word, already long gone in every shared instant that neither had known would be so few. Dean had never been his to keep.

This wasn’t Dean.

“Father,” Castiel greeted weakly, forcing himself to his knees in spite of the agony shooting through his atrophied muscles. “It’s good to finally meet you.”

“YOU AS WELL.” God stood up, towering over him.

“I’m just going to stay here for a bit, if you don’t mind,” Castiel said from the height his knees allowed. Words came stiffly. Moving was unbearably difficult. He tried to muster up the appropriate amount of awe for a meeting with God, but none of the old questions mattered anymore, and he felt so _tired_. He only wished to die, not to talk.

“ARE YOU DISAPPOINTED TO SEE ME?” Calm omniscience wasn’t a good look on Dean, and it reminded Castiel of the proprietary way Lucifer had once moved Sam’s features.

“I confused you with someone else,” the angel explained groggily. “You created a very good likeness.”

“I ASSUMED YOU WOULD FIND THIS FORM PLEASING.”

Then God smiled, which meant that Dean from the year 2013 AD smiled in a small dive bar in Houston, and Castiel couldn’t tell if it was a punishment or reward. It seemed fitting that the entity who would finally put an end to Castiel’s suffering wore Dean’s smile, that much he knew.

He’d been ready to die when heaven crumbled before his eyes. When earth disappeared in a last flash of horror, or when the door of the bunker roared with gusts of flames. He should have died then. He should have died too long ago.

“Please do it now, Father. Let it end. Let me rest,” he pleaded humbly.

God carded Dean’s fingers through Castiel’s hair, and the tender familiarity of it was without a doubt meant to be punishment. The hand was callused and scarred and warm. The pain of it rendered him speechless. He leaned desperately into the gentle touch.

“I CAME TO GIVE YOU DEATH, MY CHILD, BUT IT MAY NOT BE THE KIND YOU SEEK.”

God bent further down and cupped his cheek. Castiel would have given one more lonely million years of his life to put the spark back in Dean’s hollow eyes, to be able to at least pretend.

“YOU ARE STILL HERE FOR A REASON. YOU SURVIVED IMPOSSIBLE TRIALS BECAUSE I WILLED IT TO BE SO. FROM YOUR MULTITUDE OF SIBLINGS, YOU WERE HANDPICKED TO CARRY OUT MY BIDDING.”

Castiel shook his head numbly. This couldn’t be happening, it was all supposed to be _over_. “No, I don’t want anything more tasks, Father. I only...”

“DEATH REAPS EVERYTHING EVENTUALLY. EVEN ME. BUT NOT YOU. DO YOU KNOW WHY YOU’RE STILL ALIVE?”

“Punishment?” he guessed. It took all of his strength not to slump over. Why wasn’t it over? Why?...

“OH, CASTIEL, IT IS FAR FROM OVER. TIME IS NOT A STRAIGHT LINE. THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING FOR YOU.”

Castiel gaped at God, his mind blank. That could not be possible. Even after all the mistakes he had made, all the evil he had unleashed, surely even he could not deserve this torment.

God’s pleasant expression did not change. "WHAT DO YOU THINK HAPPENS TO THE UNIVERSE AT THE END OF ALL THINGS, MY SON?"

"It stops existing? Everything stops," he answered with dawning dread.

"AND WHAT IS NONEXISTENCE?" God pressed on, unwavering in the face of the angel’s imminent breakdown.

"Why does it matter? Why can’t you kill me now?"

He wondered if he would dare talk to God in such a curt manner if it hadn’t been Dean’s voice pushing him. Dean always pushed too hard, too much. His first instinct had always been to push back.

"YOU ARE NOT CONFINED TO SPATIAL DIMENSIONS. WHY DO YOU ASSUME THE SAME OF THE UNIVERSE? OR EXISTENCE?” God said as if it were obvious. Perhaps it should be to Castiel too, if he were not recently awakened from an almost comatose state.

“I don’t understand.”

“WHERE THE END CURLS ONTO ITSELF, SO DOES THE BEGINNING SPREAD. YOU WILL GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING WITH THE REST OF THE UNIVERSE NOW. THE GRAND STORY WILL PLAY OUT ONCE MORE."

“Time is a loop?” he whispered deliriously.

“YES. THAT IS AN APT DESCRIPTION. YOU ARE CRUCIAL, YOUR ROLE SECOND ONLY TO MINE. SOON I WILL CREATE CASTIEL, AND HE WILL WATCH OVER HUMANITY AGAIN. BUT YOU, YOU ARE NOT CASTIEL ANY LONGER. YOU SHALL ADMIRE THE WONDERS OF MY GRAND PLAN, LUCIFER’S FALL, THE PLAGUES, THE APOCALYPSE, AND ALL OF MY WONDERS WITH YOUR OWN FRESH EYES. ”

“You're lengthening my torment.”

“I AM GIVING YOU A SECOND CHANCE.”

Castiel had died countlessly since the last time he'd felt anything resembling hope. He barely recognized it, unused as it was, but it trickled through the spaces between the parched and crumbling pieces of him. He tried to squeeze it down. He could not afford to hope. After all, there was only one thing he wanted.

“Father, does this mean…” he began tentatively. “Does this mean that I... that Dea–”

"I’M SURE I DON’T NEED TO WARN YOU ABOUT PARADOXES. YOU CANNOT CONTINUE AS A FRESHLY-FORGED ANGEL IN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, OR YOUR DUPLICITY MAY THREATEN THE UNDUE NONEXISTENCE OF THE UNIVERSE. AGAIN. BUT EVIDENTLY YOU LOVE MY CREATION TOO MUCH TO ENDANGER IT." God appeared to smile at a private joke. Castiel did not smile. He knew a warning when he heard one. “IT WOULD BE A SHAME IF OUR PRECIOUS EARTH NEVER EXISTED, SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU STRAYED FROM THE RIGHT PATH.”

“What would you have me do, my Lord?” he asked, resigned to his fate.

His misgivings did not matter. He knew nothing, and his Father knew all. Better yet, if he became someone else, he could finally let go of his memories, his regret, and that seemed a decent second prize.

“YOU ARE RECEIVING THE GREATEST HONOR IMAGINABLE,” God proclaimed, his voice suddenly nothing like Dean Winchester’s. He spread his palm on the angel’s forehead, the weight of it threatening to crush. “CASTIEL IS NO MORE. PURGE HIM FROM YOU. FROM THIS MOMENT ON, YOU WILL BE KNOWN AS DEATH, MY FIRST HORSEMAN AND LOYAL SERVANT.”

As immensity rushed into Castiel’s being from God’s outstretched hand, he felt the unforgiving vice of destiny clamp around him once more. “No, I don’t want power,” he protested weakly. “I'm not worthy of this.”

"AND THAT IS WHY THE POSITION IS PERFECT FOR YOU.” God lifted the angel’s drooping chin with the tip of his fingers. The awesome thing that stared back at Castiel could scarcely be mistaken for human, let alone one particular boy from Kansas. “YOU HAVE YOUR PART TO PLAY, AND YOU ALREADY PLAYED IT, AND YOU SHALL AGAIN PLAY IT. SO WORRY NOT, O DEATH, REAPER OF ALL. IT WILL BE WELL, FOR IT ALREADY HAS BEEN."

Castiel closed his eyes.

Death rose from his knees.


	2. Leader of the Reapers

Someday, Death would come to regret his initial disinterest in the beginning of the world, but he simply couldn’t recover from unending grief as rapidly as his Father wanted. While the Lord pulled atoms from the void, Death quietly pieced himself back together beneath the shadows of the past. Alone.

Witnessing creation itself provided him with a few insights on the inner structure of the machinery. Had he paid better attention at the time, he might have caught many more crucial details. After all, Death should know those things.

In the very beginning, there was light. The bible had correctly reported at least one thing.

The leviathan were first. The being who used to be Castiel, struggling with newly upgraded senses, felt confused relief when he spotted them engulfing everything beneath their black tendrils, already nipping at their siblings as they came into being. They were undeniably monstrous, yet intelligent. Furious hunger was ingrained in them, natural like a fish darting through streams and a bird in flight. They were created to eat, to propagate, to poison. They were the plague of God. Once unleashed, all control was lost. And so God locked them away to fester in purgatory, where the rest of the hungry ones would crawl out of the black.

Death wanted to reach out, greet them, joyfully weep into their toothy maws because life could walk upon the earth once more. Something like instinct urged him down from his hiding place. In one fell swoop, he pulled a few badly injured ones out of the wiggling mass, ravenous infants already covered in teeth marks. Leviathan could kill angels, everyone knew it, but they were small and curious now, helplessly weak in his grasp. They looked up at him with fear and almost reverence. Accidentally, Death reaped his first creatures.

After struggling so long to find reprieve, he couldn't believe the ease with which he put others to rest.

The memory of the leviathan’s birth retained a wondrous tint in Death’s mind. Instead, it was the creation of the angels that filled him with unease for the many, years to come.

Absolute, unyielding, uncaring, the angels were perfect automatons, every one. Gone was the chaotic selfishness of the leviathan. They did not hunger, they did not want, they only knew obedience and inflexible love. They stood in their rows, the cold hard army of God, born to destroy any target they were shown, and the sight frightened Death more than the hungry leviathan ever could. They were so rigid that he wondered if God had designed them to crack and shatter.

Softly, strangely, he hummed a song he knew but didn’t know. He couldn't say where he'd heard it from. _Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There’s a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in._

In the beginning of the world, Death sang a song that did not yet exist and smiled a sad smile that no one saw. Perhaps that meant something.

The reapers branched out from the angels, but their sole purpose was to carry. To transport from one state to the next, precise like clockwork. They were groomed for obedience, but not for destruction or war, and Death took an immediate liking to them. They did not require vessels, did not bear weapons, and did not come bundled with a complicated hierarchy of power. Most importantly, he could see no hint of violence in their programing.

All Death wanted now was some peace of mind. He hoped his new garrison would turn out differently from the rest.

  

War raged in heaven.

Would the halcyon days truly end so soon? Death could swear that the world had barely just begun.

The novice reapers had excitedly reaped their first few humans before the pandemonium broke out. Death quickly reassured them that the conflict would not spread to their ranks, and that everything always followed God’s plan. The splintering of heaven was part of the deal. They felt confused but not afraid.

Death could stay away if he wished, distantly watching as he had watched the earth before. Reaping great numbers from afar came with an effortlessness that could only originate from God's hand. He reaped while he talked, while he traveled, while he _reaped_.

Unfortunately his curiosity won out, and Death discreetly ascended to heaven for the first time.

Disoriented at first, Death remembered that God generated the current heaven rather than the souls of the devout. It looked clean and flawless and utterly boring. The obnoxiously bright, smooth, infinite walls that customarily reverberated with Godly praises rang with echoes of violence. He turned away from the realm-shaking clash of Michael and Lucifer and plunged into the thick of battle, gently welcoming the dying glow of his old brothers and sisters into his arms. The shockwaves from the archangels’ struggle rippled amongst their lesser siblings, buffeting them away and creating injury.

Death reaped mechanically. He ignored the memories. He should not have come here.

“Who are you?” an unknown angel choked out, eyes wide, vainly trying to hold in the gushes of blue escaping from her stomach.

“Don’t be afraid, Adriel. I’m taking your pain away,” he said soothingly. In Adriel’s last conscious moments, she dimly confused him with God.

And then, amidst the chaos, he spotted Castiel.

Of course Castiel couldn’t see him unless Death wanted him to. Though he scarcely knew what to do with it, Death now held more power than the whole angel army combined. Yet when he saw Castiel viciously stab a rebel in the throat with a glistening blade, perfect and true and confident in his purpose, he felt so much lesser than a foot-soldier forgotten in the perfect domain of sanctity and white.

Later, after he found his footing, Death would carry himself with the dignity and aplomb befitting his position. But not then. On that particular day, he fled.

  

A pallid, skeletal man, Death emerged from the dust of the road with pitch black robes and a long walking stick. His life had quickly turned into a series of dramatic entrances. He was fine with that.

When the souls saw him, they _knew_. He looked the way humans secretly suspected death to look in their heart of hearts, uncanny and alien. Humans were tactile little creatures and Death's disguise gave texture to their mortality. While the reapers commonly made individual trips, he oversaw cataclysms and plagues. Entire populations easily followed him as soon as the first souls knelt in wretched awe. It saved effort and time for everyone involved.

He'd abandoned Jimmy Novak’s appearance. Nobody asked him why he constantly projected a different face over his flesh, most likely because they could not perceive the body underneath. Of the many ways he could abuse his power, this was his single indulgence.

He taught the reapers how to shapeshift. When to look human, and when to look terrifying. How to create their own vessels of flesh and blood, almost as good as a real one. How to seamlessly jump between veils and realities. He taught them how to talk down an anxious soul, or to chase after a stubborn one. He made routes and maps to maximize their efficiency. He crisscrossed the small blue globe innumerable times, overseeing their work.

He missed his car.

When God fashioned him into something new, Death had perhaps foolishly hoped his memories would leave him too. Castiel’s burdens would disappear with the end of the universe, and Death would emerge triumphant from the embers. He had so badly wanted to become someone else.

Maybe God was too far removed from emotion, or Castiel had become too human along the way, because watching the constant death of all creatures did not help him move on.

  

It still hurt to think about him. Perhaps it would always hurt.

  

Sometimes they asked about God. Not satisfied with meeting the personification of decay and change, everyone was more interested in Death’s encounter with the Almighty. God had better PR, perhaps.

Often he lied. Very occasionally he told the truth.

“Is he older than you?”

“God or me, chicken or egg. Who knows? Time is strange.”

“So did he create you too?”

“I was an accident. He was trying to make a camel.”

“Why did He give humans free will?”

“I suppose it amused Him to see those little things scrambling around chopping each others' heads off.”

“Do you know where He went?”

“Far away, creating a new breed of reapers who do their jobs instead of asking questions.”

“Does God love us?”

“A loving God would have vetoed the very concept of hell, I think. But don’t tell Him I said that.”

“What did He look like?”

Of course a _human_ would look into Death’s face and ask something so inane. No other species would inquire after God’s physical appearance, of all things. But Death had been caught in a particularly nostalgic mood that day, for the question brought on the sudden memory of laughing eyes, hands cold from a beer bottle, lips coated in amber alcohol and neon light, worn boots covered in faded splashes of blood, weary and resigned and forever young, so incredibly young, it still broke him a bit when he remembered just _how_ young. He remembered less and less, now. He worked hard not to remember.

And Death heard himself whisper, “He looked beautiful.”

  

Death had been a dutiful servant of heaven once, and he slipped back into the role like an ill-fitting suit, the fabric worn thin from too much use.

He'd certainly questioned, and he'd undeniably doubted, but he'd performed his obligations without fail. He had no choice but to do the same thing again. He would bury it, bury it all, just like he hid the cracks in his chassis once upon a time. He would tamp it down until nothing but a hardened lump remained where the regrets used to be. A legion of reapers looked to him with complete trust, still too naive to doubt, and it felt familiar to lead without direction. He knew how to go through the motions, how to fake confidence, how to lie with a straight face. That was good enough to keep things going.

He lost himself in managing the placid dance of life and death, and he pretended with all his might to feel nothing.

At first he believed it to be a temporary solution. He stared into the gulf of time with the full knowledge that he wasn’t strong enough, he couldn’t possibly do it, it couldn’t possibly last. But he took each excruciating day one by one, even when it threatened to strangle him with grief. Months passed. Years and centuries ground by. He buried it. He didn’t look back. The constant struggle became part of him.

There was no other way to keep going.

  

Death acquired a honey galette from Egypt. The crust was made of rough crushed oats. It bore a barely passing resemblance to American pie from the 21st century.

It tasted of molecules.

  

“It's not fair,” said the sobbing girl. “It wasn’t long enough.” She clutched at her mother’s legs with her small hands. They threaded through immaterially, just like Castiel’s fingers had long ago slipped out of a whiskey glass in heaven.

“I know,” Death replied. “Believe me, I know. I’m sorry.”

She was an insignificant footnote in the long list of Death’s hurts, but she became the drop that overfilled his cup. Maybe it was simple weakness on his part. Nevertheless, he stopped reaping in person.

He delegated the transport of souls completely, and contented himself with an administrative position. The reapers did not understand why their leader insisted on setting up shop in the bowels of a nondescript patch of American soil that would someday become Carthage, Missouri. Explaining the fulfillment of prophecies from nonexistent books written by unborn prophets proved a difficult task, though Death tried as best he could. He only confused the reapers further.

Resigned, he mumbled something about destiny and God’s will, and they all left it at that. It wasn’t quite a lie, but it was far enough from the truth to frustrate him.

Of course, the reapers respected him immensely. Perhaps they even feared him. As for love, friendship, or even understanding, Death felt determined to do without.

His sudden disappearance unfortunately prompted wild, stupid rumors. _God trapped him in the earth because he’s too powerful! God punished Death because of some kind of terrible sin! Death tried to overthrow God! It's true, I heard it from Metatron._  Death rolled his eyes and ignored their wishful thinking. God was already long gone.

Because he could, he snipped off a cozy little piece of earthly dimension, shaped it to his liking, and made it accessible only to those who knew exactly where to look. He lined the walls of his underground office with the bluest hydrangeas he could find, potted oleander, lilies, an various coleuses and ivies and cacti that struck his fancy. They thrived because Death willed them to, lush and healthy without seeing a single crumb of sunshine or water for the length of their artificially long lives. Death liked the splashes of color that they provided. The rest of the warm and earthy decor looked suspiciously similar to the Men of Letters’ library. Many years later, Death would disdainfully claim that they'd copied _his_ interior design.

Even with near unlimited power, he had no way of satisfying his dim longing for flannel and blue jeans. Eons had yet to pass before the era of television and classic rock, fluorescent diners and smoky bars, Jack Daniels and mass-produced beer. Only junk food was forever. Though he seldom accepted visits, and then only concerning particularly pressing matters, the reapers quickly learned to arm themselves with unhealthy food during their visits.

He stayed in the same room for many years. Hiding.

Though Death himself would deny it if confronted, outsiders might speculate upon his motives, and come to the conclusion that he was waiting for something.


	3. Dean Winchester Is Saved

Was it strange that a being yearning so badly for humanity had completely shut himself away from it?

Death kept track of the contingent of souls under his care, as was his duty. Or at least he kept track of their life expectancy, of the trends in their deaths and food. Though this approach lacked his earlier personal touch, it worked for him, it worked for the reapers, and so nothing changed.

His days of boring, predictable routine offered no surprises and very little discomfort. He’d had his fill of pain, several lifetimes of it, and his current work proved rewarding in its own quiet way. He kept himself occupied and out of trouble. More importantly, his mind did not often wander to the myriad of things he did not wish to remember. If a reaper visited him with a slice of apple pie in tow, the smell of it did not stab him in the gut. The longing had dulled into complete manageability.

He was absorbed in planning a new Southern Asian reaping route when he heard it. A joyous cry of victory over abject struggles. A glorious proclamation that shook even Jimmy Novak’s hidden bones.

_'Dean Winchester is saved'_

Death sat frozen for several seconds.

“Son of a bitch,” he whispered.

“What kind of burrito is this?”

“Beef, sir.”

“Ah. Thank you very much, Tessa.”

She stared at her lap while he dipped a nacho into the rich salsa.

"How are you? Your ordeal was quite traumatic.”

“No. Well…” She shrugged. “Yes, it was unpleasant,” she corrected, “but that's not why I came.”

She spoke of Alastair's carnage as if it were any other job. He could never relate to the ease with which reapers took violent loss in stride. They had death ingrained in their most fundamental being, and remained unshaken even by the murder of a fellow reaper. They mourned in their placid, peculiar way, without missing their fallen comrades. Death couldn't imitate this skill.

“Why are you here then? Is it because you kissed Dean Winchester? He was the one who got away, after all,” he said evenly. He had perfected the art of saying things evenly. Tranquil. Emotionless. The perfect leader.

“Oh.” Her brow dimpled slightly in worry. “You already know. Of course you do. You know everything.”

“I only appear omniscient because you’re allowed to see so little.”

Death swallowed his first bite of the burrito. It tasted of molecules.

“I shouldn’t have kissed him,” she said with complete conviction.

Death tried not to let Castiel's prior meeting with Tessa affect the way he behaved, but he’d liked her from afar. He liked the soothing certainty in her voice. He liked her purposeful calm. There also appeared to be a faint sadness to her, a sadness he understood too well.

He pushed the place-mat a few inches towards her. “Try a nacho.” He motioned politely at the nachos, and she tentatively stuffed one in her mouth. “Are you here looking for punishment, Tessa?”

“I thought it’d be more honest to tell you myself,” she mumbled around the crumbs. “And maybe to ask for your advice, if you don't mind.”

"I see.” He steepled his fingers. It made him look distinguished, he thought. “The first thing… the very first thing I did was to warn you against mingling with your charges. It might have seemed draconian of me, stuffy old Death afraid of the forbidden fruit, but I didn't do it solely to keep you focused on your work. Sometimes my restrictions exist to protect you."

She arched an eyebrow. "Protect us from the humans?"

"We spend every second maintaining order in the universe, and all they need is to be. This is a seductive concept for those on the outside, looking in on them as we do.” He tilted his head. “Do you envy them?”

She smiled slightly, that sad smile he still remembered somehow through the layers of years. He remembered the strangest, most useless things.

“They’re heartbroken when we collect them. It makes you wonder about what came before. Maybe they’ve got the right of it, you know? Short and small, yet beautiful, like… like candles. Light that fits inside the palm of a hand. Or fireworks! Have you ever seen any fireworks, sir? It’s _amazing_ what they create, isn’t it? If I were human...” Her words petered out self-consciously. “That doesn’t make any sense. You must think I’m crazy.”

“Angels have fallen for less. You’re not crazy,” he replied flatly, his mind far away and long ago.

The silence grew awkward. Since the universe began, Death couldn’t remember talking about anything other than work. Now he remembered why. He'd never been very good at holding conversations.

He rubbed a weary hand on the head of his cane, picking his words carefully. “I’ve tried quite hard not to give reapers a reason to fall,” he admitted. He had the opportunity to learn from what he perceived to be God’s mistakes, and thought he'd done an acceptable job. “However... if against your better judgement, you decide to get a taste humanity beyond this... initial curiosity, I'd advise against the righteous man. He’s hell-charred beyond repair, he never learned how to love without losing himself, and Lucifer is coming back soon.”

He took a dramatic sip from his soda to let his words seep in. “Don’t love a broken thing. You can't fix him. He can quite literally destroy you, and neither of you will know how or why."

Tessa lifted her quizzical eyebrow even higher as she piled cheese onto a second nacho. “No offense, sir, but would it really hurt as much as you say?”

“It hurts to lose the things you love. Better not to love at all. Better to live with nothing, and lose nothing,” he lectured.

“But their souls will still exist in heaven. They’ll never truly be gone.”

She was surprisingly argumentative for a reaper. He must make note of that.

Death narrowed his eyes. This was usually enough to silence everyone in his presence. “You know how I feel about heaven, Tessa.”

“Yes, and I don’t understand your distaste. The humans are at peace there.”

Maybe some of them could grow to love confinement. He had difficulty picturing Dean being content in a gilded prison, but what if he were? What if that was what it took? Maybe people like Dean could never have peace unless outside forces chained them down. Maybe restraints would be a relief from the endless fight.

“I sincerely hope you’re right,” he relented. He did not wish to press the subject.

“I shouldn’t have kissed him,” Tessa repeated with less certainty than before. “Did you know I was going to do it? Could you have stopped me?”

“Well, I’ve foreseen a _few_ things. If anything, my limited knowledge is a hindrance to my actions.”

“Fixed points in time that you can’t disturb.” She nodded as if it were obvious. Apparently some aspects of the universe were obvious to everyone but him.

“Exactly. I see invisible lines that no one else has to follow, lines that I can never cross.” God's warning about paradoxes still haunted him daily. “I am quite possibly the only being in this world who truly possesses no free will. I complete my duties without getting involved. I maintain the balance.”

“Does that mean that reapers do have free will, then? And angels?”

“Of course you do,” he replied carelessly, the certainty that he would someday regret his words dawning on him as soon as he said them. “You can abandon your god-given duty anytime you want. That doesn’t mean it won’t destroy you and all that you stand for, but you may certainly make that choice if you're reckless enough.”

“But God… God only gifted free will to the humans…” she stammered, her eyes round like planets.

“I’m not God.”

Tessa stared intensely at the plates of greasy food, deep in thought. “Yeah,” she finally said. “God left. And you stayed.”

The conversation toed the party-line rather too closely for Death’s comfort. He hoped the prickly shiver down his neck was purely imaginary. “Is there anything else you want?”

She seemed to understand the sudden briskness in his tone. “I’d like to be assigned somewhere else, if that’s possible.”

“We could use some reinforcements in Northern Africa. I’ll arrange to have Omar show you your new routes. You have twelve hours to get your affairs in order.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Tessa transferred to her new post uneventfully.

God had left the Earth so long ago that even the archangels scarcely remembered, and yet a vague fear of punishment hung over Death for the next few weeks.

The angel puttered in the vicinity of Carthage for five hours, searching more and more desperately for an entrance, before Death finally took pity on him.

' _How busy are you, Quentin?_ ' he addressed to the head-reaper of the Missourian routes.

The intruder fruitlessly inspected a gas station pump, and Quentin’s reply came twenty feet away from that very spot. ' _Is this about Zachariah? We've been watching his movements, but he doesn't seem sharp enough to do any harm._ '

Death rolled his eyes. ' _Yes, I could hear everyone laughing at the poor thing.'_ The reapers' communication channels had buzzed incessantly for the last few hours. He decided to put a stop to it when they discussed using reapings as currency for a betting pool. _'Since you clearly have nothing better to do, can you lead our guest to my office, please?_ '

' _Immediately, sir._ '

The eerie, intimidating, barely humanoid appearance Quentin bore to welcome Zachariah didn't seem necessary, but many reapers felt disdain for heaven's pettiness and short-sighted politics. Or at least Death assumed that this was meant as a subtle insult. Sometimes reapers confused even him.

“Uh, nice... face,” Zachariah noted.

“Death will see you now,” Quentin rumbled affably. His head rippled in elaborate ways, and his skin was the distinctive color of a two day old cadaver, probably in an attempt to show off. Angels were unable to make their own vessels and were forced to woo humans until they gave up ownership of their bodies. Reapers found the whole process absurd and a little funny.

Zachariah's smile looked as oily as his voice sounded. “Good, good. I've always had the utmost respect for your lot, brother. It is a privilege for me to consolidate our eternal kinship with Death.” His carefully chosen words oozed unctuously from his mouth. “Your role is very important – nay, critical for heaven's victory.”

“Please don't call me that.”

Zachariah blinked. “Excuse me?”

Quentin's hand-crafted eyes drilled sternly into the visitor's head. “I'm not your brother,” he said.

“I... well, reapers are just mutated angels. We're brothers in a sense,” Zachariah insisted with a condescending wave.

The reaper, with all the restraint he was capable of, gritted his teeth and extended a grey-skinned hand, expecting the rude angel to take it. “Come with me.”

The angel grimaced but took the offered hand.

Death looked up from his desk, his gaze landing on the bald head of the angel's vessel. “What do you want?” he asked the visitor who was gaping in dismay at a particularly large potted cactus.

“How did we get in?” Zachariah exclaimed without bothering to hide his anger.

“I'd rather keep my location a secret, if you don't mind.” Death nodded at Quentin, silently dismissing him.

But Quentin seemed displeased. ' _Sir, he called me a mutant angel,_ ' he complained privately. He stepped towards the back wall to stand at attention, as if he were a bodyguard or soldier. His demeanor remained utterly discreet and professional though his whining was not.

' _I'm sorry to hear that,_ ' Death answered neutrally.

Zachariah whined much louder. “What if I need to come back later? I need to know how to get into this godforsaken place!”

“I assume you came to talk about the apocalypse,” Death deflected smoothly.

“Ah. Yes, about that.” Zachariah's pasted-on grin wavered when he properly met the gaze of the being of boundless power he'd come to court. Nonetheless, he continued valiantly. “You... You've always been a loyal servant to God, just like us, so we want to give you... uh, the opportunity to help the righteous side of the war.”

“Mm-hm.” Death leaned back in his comfortable chair and poked at his french fries. He'd always been a loyal servant of God. Yes, of course. Not an ounce of rebellion in him.

“When Lucifer is released, he’ll try to _bind you to his will_ ,” Zachariah continued in hushed tones, as if it were the hugest of revelations. “Michael wants to give you an opportunity to stay an agent of heaven. All you have to do is feed us Lucifer's position at all times-”

“Let me stop you right there.” He beckoned at his reaper to escort their guest back home. “I'm not batting for either side of this... kerfuffle. I'll let the devil bind me because I have no choice in the matter, but I don't want any further involvement.”

Quentin stepped up and put his wrinkled fingers on the angel's shoulder.

“We're fighting for God! For heaven!” Zachariah exclaimed in panic, shrugging off Quentin's grip.

“I don’t like the archangels' constant use of God as an excuse. Have a safe trip. And good luck convincing the Winchesters to sign over their bodies, I'm sure they'll be very cooperative.”

“You can't send me back like this, Michael will punish m-”

Death waved. Zachariah disappeared.

_'Sir, I carried your guest back to heaven. He struggled but we got there. And he still doesn't know how to get in your office.'_

_'Thank you very much, Quentin, you did well.'_

The second biggest advantage reapers had over angels, aside from the whole messy vessel business, was that they were built entirely for transportation. As such, they were capable of carrying any entity to almost any destination. Including pissed off angels.

“Don’t throw wild parties while I’m gone,” Death quipped to the improvised assembly of stone-faced reapers. “Or at least clean up after yourselves, if you do.”

As usual, none of them seemed to find him funny.

In preparation, they all wore their most distinguished human forms, their matching black suits eerily resembling the standard apparel of an angel garrison. Huddled in Death’s office on the cusp of the binding, enjoying a last moment of respite before their leader was dragged away, the large crowd fit in the confined room because Death willed them to fit.

Ravi was the one who broke the grim silence. “Is the world going to end?” he said in a small, defeated voice.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I'll only destroy it a little bit. Any other questions?”

“What will Lucifer do to you? If you are under his control, does that mean he can target us?”

Death rolled his sunken eyes. No amount of tragedy and death could ruffle them, and yet they turned paranoidwhenever anything messed with their precious routine. “I’ll be quite alright, Vera. I’m Death. He’s just an angel. As for you lot, neither faction of the battle has any particular quarrel with you. Stay out of the way. Don’t attract interest. If heaven or hell pierce through enemy lines far enough to reach any of you, then the world has already ended and we’ll have far greater problems to worry about.”

“Do you know which side will win?”

Death tilted his head. “What if I say yes?”

“Well… Are you allowed to tell us?”

Death peered intensely at the surface of the table, still polished and glistening like the very first day. “Free will,” he said flatly. “Free will is going to win.” He was met with a solid wall of confused stares and disappointed frowns. They thought it was one of his usual non-answers.

“Remember, this is not a permanent situation,” Death repeated soothingly. “All I ask is for the veil to maintain usual traffic, more or less. The daily shipment of souls may be larger than usual, but I trust you to adapt to the new conditions. Contact me for the direst of emergencies only. Lucifer should not learn any of your precise locations, just to be safe. And if anyone tries to bribe you, well…” He paused.

“Get out.” His reassuring monotone turning grim and hard. “Go take your positions.”

A few determined nods, a few last whispered goodbyes, and a swarm of reapers shot across South-Western Missouri to welcome their new satanic leader.

“That means you too, Tessa,” Death snapped at the lone figure lagging behind.

She smoothed her hands down the unfamiliar folds of her dark suit. “Is it true? That free will is going to prevail?”

“No, it was a lie. All intelligent life will be eradicated in the titanic struggle. The platypuses shall inherit the earth.”

She huffed ruefully. “I guess I shouldn’t have asked. No one ever gets a real answer out of you.”

“Go with the others. You’ll do your duty, as I must do mine.”

She straightened her back, her vessel a line of quiet determination. This was no time for idle chatter. “Yes sir.”

He tidied the slightly askew angle of her collar. “Are you ready?”

“Are you?”

“Of course. I’ve always wanted a car.”

The ground cracked open.

“Hello, Death,” said Lucifer, triumph written in every line of his face. But Death didn’t look at the devil.

Death stared at Dean.


	4. The Meet-Cute

Death knocked on the hood of the rusted Pontiac. “Good morning.”

The man yelped in surprise and slid out from under his car, only to come face to face with a solemn skeleton in a black coat. “Uh, hello. We're not open yet,” he said to the strange British gentleman trespassing on his property.

“You own a lovely salvage yard,” Death said politely. “I spent some time in salvage yards in my youth.” The rows of cars and piles of spare parts were shinier and more orderly than Bobby Singer's, but the same spirit was there.

“Thanks, I guess.” The man, who happened to be named Wallace Compton, sat up and wiped his hands on a tattered rag. “Can I... Can I help you?”

“Yes, Wallace. I would like to purchase a vehicle.” He pointed to a car covered by a dusty green tarp. “This one, to be specific.”

The man nodded skeptically. “Uh-huh. Well that particular one's not for sale, sorry. And like I said, we're not open yet, so-”

“I have money.” Death probably should have opened with that. He tucked his cane under his armpit and carefully opened a black suitcase to reveal the sizable amount of paper bills within.

“Jesus titty-fucking Christ,” Wallace exclaimed loudly. “How much cash is in there?”

“About five hundred thousand American dollars. I've also been saddled with a company car by my new... employer, but it did not meet my expectations, and I'm willing to leave it with you free of charge. It's parked a few rows over, if you want to take a look.”

The man scrambled to his feet, only to yell, “Is that an _Aston Martin_?”

“It is a silver Lagonda Rapide built in 1962,” Death recited. “I understand it's worth a substantial sum on account of its mint condition.”

“And you're just gonna _give it to me_?” Wallace sounded very distressed. Death had expected him to be happy.

Death shrugged. “I don't want it.”

After letting the man stew in a sufficiently long stretch of shocked silence, he gently asked, “May I see your Cadillac?”

“Ye... Yeah. Yes.” Wallace half-jogged to the covered car, pulled off the tarp, and nervously rolled the dirty ball of plastic against his chest. “Ta-dah. It's, uh...” He stared hesitantly at the creamy white paint before continuing resolutely. “Listen, I fixed up this car in my spare time, and I'm real proud of what I did with it, but it would go for maybe fifty, sixty grand tops. I can't rip you off like this. There's no way in hell this baby's worth half a mill.”

“You called it baby,” Death pointed out.

“Huh?”

Death nodded knowingly and dropped the briefcase at the man's feet. “Yes, this will do nicely,” he declared. “I quite like the fins.”

“Damn. This... isn't how I imagined my morning to go.” Perhaps an expensive new car and a briefcase full of money were difficult things to process for the average human. “The... the papers for the car are in my...”

The man did not remember giving away the Cadillac's keys, and looked doubly confused when Death scooted into the driver's seat through an inexplicably open door.

“Wallace Compton,” Death said formally as he tested the shape of the wheel, “you have a wife and a son. Is that correct?”

“How d'you know that?”

“This is a good automobile. Your family can stay.”

Wallace would discover the piles of stiffening corpses littering his town a few hours later, when none of his employees would make it to work.

The owner of Compton's Salvage, the local junkyard, soon moved to Idaho with his wife and seven year old child. Coincidentally, they were the sole survivors of a mysterious plague.

Not often, when he became just drunk enough, Wally would tell the entire bar about the British man with the briefcase, and his paper-white skin and his ink-black coat, and the massacre he left in the wake of his Cadillac Eldorado. No one believed him, not even his wife, but it was a good story.

Death offered Lucifer one of his rare smiles. “Look, my reapers mailed me a present.” He proudly presented a California license plate engraved with the words “BUH*BYE”. It was accompanied by a handwritten note penned by Tessa, that read: “ _Hello, boss. A few of us got together and found a little something for that car you always wanted. Maybe you’ll find it amusing. We hope the destruction of the world is going well. - Tessa._ ”

Lucifer glared at the plate. “Are you for real?”

“It's hilarious,” Death asserted gravely.

The angel sighed, planted his elbow on the table and let his peeling cheek fall heavily into his palm. “You're very deadpan. It's hard to tell when you're messing with me.”

Death intertwined his fingers in his most distinguished manner. “In truth, the transportation you provided wasn't American enough for my taste.”

“The car's British. _You're_ British,” Lucifer complained. He picked at a scab on his knuckle, dropping a few flakes of bloody skin onto the red tablecloth.

“I understand why you'd be under such an impression, but no. I have no special affiliation with Britain, and my accent is a facade. Besides, I remember the prophecies mentioning a pale mare, not a silver one.”

“Silver is pale! It's a pale color,” The Devil angrily pointed out. His outburst turned the heads of a few customers. “And what makes you think you have enough free time to buy cars in the middle of my apocalypse?”

Death frowned. “People are dying. Your apocalypse is proceeding. I even reaped the polite UPS employee who delivered my license plate. You have no reason to question the quality or quantity of my work.”

Death pointed invitingly at the basket of onion rings. Lucifer shook his head with impatience. Death shrugged and took a large bite of the deep-fried vegetable. It tasted of molecules, as usual.

“When Zachariah tried to suck up to you, you sent him packing. Aren't you on my side?”

Death lifted his arm, where an invisible strand of magic dangled sadly. “I'm still on your side because you bound me. Don't expect my allegiance, Lucifer. I may not serve heaven, but I absolutely don't serve you. Oh, thank you,” he addressed to the Biggerson's waitress who refilled his coffee cup. Her smile was strained, and Lucifer's odd skin condition seemed to make her nervous. “Besides, this is not the end of the world, my poor dear angel,” he added, pleased with the coarse smell of his drink. “I saw the end of the world with two of my very old eyes. This? This is nothing close to the sheer magnitude of The End. This is a cockfight between spoiled children.”

He emptied a plastic cup of cream into his coffee. The checkered tablecloth bunched a little under the weight of the coins and bills that made up Death's considerable tip. Lucifer stood up, obviously tired of Death's antics. “Take care of this place and get back to work,” he ordered.

Death’s mind flashed to a restaurant full of corpses, the faint smell of coffee, a woman with holes instead of eyes whimpering on the floor, and mumbled, “Go to hell.”

“Uh, hello, I bound you. You can't say no.”

“I'm... counselling you otherwise,” Death amended carefully.

Lucifer's wings burst out of his shoulders, causing astounded gasps all around them. “Kill them. Do it now,” he ordered.

Death leveled a placid stare at him. He’d been so afraid of Lucifer, once. He could hardly see why.

“You'll want to stay in my good graces, angel,” he warned calmly, any trace of good humor gone. “After your tantrum peters out and I decide reap the universe, what do you think will happen to you?”

And something about Death's serenity must have frightened even the Morningstar, because the angel's grand wings and even grander ego seemed to visibly shrivel before Death's fearless brown eyes. “I still expect you to work on the omens. Is that clear?” Lucifer commanded coldly. “You'll target Bobby Singer next.”

Death took a long sip of his coffee. He couldn't taste the cream and sugar, not the way he remembered, but he appreciated the warmth. “Good luck with the Winchesters. I'm sure they'll continue to be cooperative,” he said to the echo of flapping wings that Lucifer left in his wake.

Death sat, and did what he did best. He waited. Such short passages of time hardly made a dent in his vast reserve of patience.

Whenever Lucifer asked for an update, he killed a handful of humans and replied evasively about the ongoing eradication of Chicago. The angel’s prodding grew more annoyed with each conversation, and Death oscillated between vague amusement and complete indifference. He could destroy the city with a thought if he wished to, and they both knew it.

He didn’t wish to.

Thankfully Lucifer was sharp enough to fear the elemental force he’d chained to his friable wrist of rebellion and grace, and as long as his enemies exploded satisfyingly, he happily avoided direct interactions. It was more leeway than Death could hope for. When Dean Winchester finally sneaked through the backdoor of the cozy Italian restaurant, the body-count in Chicago remained safely within the low thousands.

He was exactly the same as Death remembered, every stubborn inch unchanged, foolhardily charging into a city on the verge of destruction, brandishing a toothpick to slay a giant. Death wasn’t sure what he had expected.

No, that wasn’t true. He had expected disappointment. He had expected Dean to be a letdown, to pale next to Death’s distorted memories. But Dean was never very good at meeting expectations.

With a clatter, Crowley’s scythe harmlessly dropped to the floor. “Thanks for returning that,” Death murmured, neatly placing the weapon next to the plate like an over-sized piece of cutlery. One less reaper-killer in public circulation. For that alone, he could consider the meeting successful. “Join me, Dean. The pizza's delicious.” He felt immensely proud of his stoic exterior, though the tangled mess of emotion underneath was less than ideal.

After a moment’s hesitation, Dean walked to the table with the slow gait of a condemned man limping towards the noose.

“Took you long enough to find me,” Death murmured. That was an enormous understatement. He’d waited through the death and birth of stars and worlds.

He almost dreaded a flicker of recognition, though such fear made no practical sense. Even the righteous man remained just a man. Nothing special by most standards of measure. To him Castiel was blue eyes and drooping wings and a chest covered in bleeding sigils. He was as incapable of seeing through Death’s face as God had been at passing for human.

If anyone were to unmask Death for the scared and lonely angel hidden beneath his flesh, it wouldn’t be Dean Winchester.

“I've been wanting to talk to you,” Death continued tranquilly. That was another understatement. A universe ago, Castiel would have set reality aflame to see this particular face again.

“I gotta say... Ahem. Mixed feelings about that,” Dean quipped, cocky smile firmly in place, his only armor against the enemy. Dean considered him an enemy now, he must remember. “So is this the part where… where you kill me?”

And the way he _said_ it. Death couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. It was just so… so Dean.

In that moment, Death felt two things he hadn’t felt in a very long time. The first one was genuine admiration. Of course Dean’s plan was extremely stupid, but it stemmed from a desperate, lucid bravery. He felt ready to make the final sacrifice, was fully aware of the consequences if he failed. He would die for a fool’s errand, for the slightest chance of saving his planet from certain doom, without fame or fanfare to compensate for a lifetime of suffering. With one insolent question, Death suddenly remembered why Castiel had given everything to defend a lost cause.

And the second thing Death felt was _deep_ irritation.

It was as if nothing had changed.

“You have an inflated sense of your importance,” Death lied smoothly. He had become an infinitely more practiced liar than Castiel. Yes, some things did change, even if Dean did not. “To a thing like me, a thing like you, well... Think how you'd feel if a bacterium sat at your table and started to get snarky. This is one little planet in one tiny solar system in a galaxy that's barely out of its diapers.” What was it he said to Dean the first time around? _You should show me some respect._ Did the boy the same effect on everyone?

“I'm old, Dean. Very old,” he continued. “So I invite you to contemplate how insignificant I find you.”

They both hesitated in the frightened silence that followed. “Eat,” Death suggested politely. Dean took a bite of the pizza as if the proverbial gun was held to his head. “Good, isn't it?”

When nothing happened, Dean began chewing with more confidence, safe in the assumption that nobody else in the history of mankind had ever eaten Death’s deep-dish pizza in the middle of a restaurant full of corpses at the tail-end of the apocalypse. The sheer weirdness seemed to calm him. “Well, I gotta ask. How old are you?” he mumbled with his mouth full.

“As old as God. Maybe older,” said Death, rehearsed and automatic. “Neither of us can remember anymore. Life, death, chicken, egg. Regardless. At the end, I'll reap him, too.”

His quiet certainty surprised even him.

That raised Dean’s eyebrows. “God? You'll reap _God_?”

“Oh, yes. God will die, too, Dean.” He’d never felt so sure of it until that very moment, staring right into Dean Winchester’s face for what could technically be construed as the first time. He could scarcely believe he’d mistaken his Father’s disguise for the real thing.

Dean smiled uncomfortably. “Well, this is way above my pay grade.”

“Just a bit,” Death agreed, almost smiling himself.

“So, then why am I still breathing, sitting here with you? What do you want?”

_I was in love with you, a very long time ago. I wanted to see you again._

“The leash around my neck, off,” Death grumbled. Apocalypse. Priorities. No room for going off-script. “Lucifer has me bound to him. Some unseemly little spell. He has me where he wants, when he wants. That's why I couldn't go to you. I had to wait for you to catch up. He made me his weapon. Hurricanes, floods, raising the dead. I'm more powerful than you can process, and I'm enslaved to a bratty child with a temper tantrum.”

“And you think… I can unbind you?” Dean asked skeptically.

“There's your ridiculous bravado again, of course you can't," Death sighed. "But you can help me take the bullets out of Lucifer's gun.” He slipped off his ring. For a moment he considered making a long speech about his being a Horseman in name only, about humanity’s misconceptions, about the ring’s merely decorative purposes, about manipulating Lucifer to help them win, but in the end Dean wouldn't see the difference between a supernatural piece of crap and an even bigger supernatural piece of crap. Death was simply the biggest there was. “I understand you want this. I'm inclined to give it to you.”

“To _give_ it to me?” the boy repeated, clearly wary of a trap. He wasn't a dumbass.

“That's what I said.”

“But what about…”

“Chicago? I suppose it can stay. I like the pizza.”

Dean stared at him blankly, clearly not catching onto the joke. Death knew that look well. He often saw it on the faces of his reapers whenever he tried to be funny.

“There are conditions.”

“Ok, like?” Dean replied impatiently.

And there came the sticking point. “You have to do whatever it takes to put Lucifer in his cell.”

“Of course.”

“ _Whatever it takes,”_ Death hammered.

“That's the plan,” Dean countered stubbornly, defensively, as if he’d completely forgotten who he was talking to.

“No. No plan. Not yet.” None of them could avoid this part of the story. Though now that they'd reached this point, Death realized how much he wanted to avoid it. “Your brother. He's the one that can stop Lucifer. The only one.”

“What? You think -”

“I know.” He had no choice. He’d always been fated to play the part of the killer, of the ultimate push that sent Sam tumbling into hell. “So I need a promise. You're going to let your brother jump right into that fiery pit.” He paused for emphasis, his words hanging heavy in the air. “Well, do I have your word?”

“Ok, yeah. Yes,” Dean lied.

And just like that, Death had become one more monster who wanted to hurt Sam. Dean would never trust him. But it didn’t matter what a single man thought, not when existence itself hung in the balance.

Death could feel relatively proud of the entire interaction except for one minor slippage near the end. Instead of gritting out a gruff, “Don't blow it, Dean,” as he had planned weeks ago in his head, he let out a subdued, “Be careful.”

Dean snorted a bit rudely. “You want me to open Lucifer's cage and throw my brother in it. I think it's a little late for careful,” he said as a goodbye.

Afterwards, no matter how hard Death tried to convince himself that the meeting had gone well, the rebuff felt like a slap in the face. He decided not to think about it.

Death met Dean again, and the world didn’t stop turning. In fact the timing of their chat was quite inconvenient, what with the devil curtailing their movements, torrents of innocents to dispatch, and apocalyptic omens to manufacture. He met Dean again, and he felt no different. He did not heal. He did not break down in tears. There had been little twinges of… _something_ fluttering under his cool facade, he could not deny that, but Death had evolved and matured, and his past no longer owned him.

This was proof. Death had truly moved on.

 _Surely_ he had moved on.

The apocalypse ended soon enough, and it seemed as if the entire world let out a collective sigh of relief.

And Death was finally free.

Wasn’t he?

A chorus of voices arose. “Sir, sir, you’re back!” “Welcome back, sir!”

Death stared confusedly at the enormous rally of reapers blocking the entrance to his underground office, assembled in a messy facsimile of Lucifer’s binding ritual.

“Is something wrong?” he addressed to no one in particular. But they were all in their most informal, non-threatening human appearances and attires, and they looked terribly pleased about something. Even Tessa’s perpetually grave smile was infused with warmth.

“No, no,” Soraya piped up enthusiastically. “We’re all just happy about your return, sir.” She cut through the crowd, triumphantly brandishing a package in her arms. “We got you a cake!” She opened the box, revealing an elaborate red velvet cheesecake, _‘Welcome Back, Death’_ written tidily in white icing.

“Thank you,” he murmured, a bit at a loss. “I missed you as well.”

“We’re glad everything can return to normal,” said Hakan proudly. “Do you think you will make more personal calls with us, now that you’re out?”

Death surveyed the bright, expectant faces.

“The worst isn’t over,” he admitted. A few of the smiles fell. “I’m afraid there are more hardships to come, though I’m sure it’s nothing we can’t handle. However, I _would_ enjoy getting more mileage out of my new car. Maybe I’ll take a more hands-on approach for a few centuries until you all start to bore me.” He carefully took the box from Soraya’s proffered hands. “Now get back to work. The souls won’t reap themselves. Shoo.”

Though they each took their turn to say a few words, offering good wishes and choice insults about the stupidity of angels, Death eventually found himself alone in his office. He carefully examined the plants, stored Crowley’s scythe in his ever growing collection of rare artifacts, and added the last unpublished manuscripts of the Winchester Gospels to his bookshelves.

The cake tasted like molecules, obviously, but it was the intention that counted.

No entity as powerful as Death _needed_ a car.

Driving became his newest, strangest hobby, as if he were making up for lost time under the endless expanse of sky. The reapers accepted that their boss would always have unexplainable peculiarities, and this was one more to add to the pile.

He stopped on the edge of highways and perched comfortably on the hood when his employees came with problems and food. The old office, though his fondness for the place remained, was laid bare for all to see, and moving to a new one seemed the safest course of action. None could guess his ever-changing location. The magical knickknacks, assorted artifacts of power, scrolls, books, etc, found a comfortable new home in the widened trunk.

Aside from the odd meeting, he primarily spent his free time sampling fast food. Once, he stopped to admire a particularly large herd of cows. Another time, he watched an entire procession of giant balloons bearing the faces of colorful critters. The heads of the children were raised above the crowd upon the shoulders of their parents, partially blocking his view.

He enjoyed the compliments his car received. “That is one sweet ride, mister!” Death smiled at them politely each time. Though he shed no tears for killing humans at random only a few months prior, mingling among them proved infinitely more pleasant. His shackles were gone. Now that he was alone and mildly free, he could explore the earth. He could drive as far as he fancied.

Besides, humans appreciated the full _awesomeness_ of his car. This was not a word he used often, but no other word was good enough to describe such a car. The rumble of the engine, the give of the pedals under his feet, the solidity of the wheel under his thin fingers, mankind flying by outside his windows, he loved it. He loved everything about it.

He drove as if he were someone else, someone dead and gone, with a home to go back to at the end of the trip. Someone who could bridge the distance to the person he loved by staying on the road all night, lulled by bright headlights and the soft lullaby of engines, and the low thrum of anticipation keeping his borrowed bones warm.

He drove to a house in Cicero, Indiana. An olive-skinned woman laughed on the porch, ruffled her son’s dark hair as she poked in her purse for her keys. He drove away.

Back in his old office, the bookshelves grew dusty. The bricks dulled. The tables lost their lacquered shine. It no longer served a purpose of any kind, but a a last twinge of affection wouldn’t let him give up the place. And so he opened a crack in the ceiling to let sun rays in. Only slightly aided by magic, the plants thrived, outgrew their pots and dug their swollen roots through the floor and into the soft earth. The prickly cacti, strong coleuses and hungry ivy burst into a thick new canopy of life, and the air filled with petals and sweet pollen.

Buried under the flickering streetlamps of crisscrossing roads, Death grew a garden.

This was the truth.

He’d become an extremely good liar. It seemed a natural consequence of being very ancient and very bitter. He also appeared to have picked up various other Winchester traits along the way, such as using humor to mask his real thoughts, and hiding his problems under astronomical amounts of denial.

The real truth was that Death had waited for Dean in the beginning. Shutting away the outside world, putting his entire self on hold, preparing for _something_ looming distantly in the horizon. It had not been random. He’d changed so much and become so set in his ways that he’d _almost_ made peace with this new existence - until Castiel’s cry of triumph chimed across creation. _Almost_ , but not quite.

 _'Dean Winchester is saved.'_ What a naive thing to say.

The boy was the same. Exactly the same. Stubborn, passionate, magnetic, contradictory, maddeningly stupid, and everything Death had treasured in secret. And the only person Dean Winchester truly cared for was Sam. Dean might also learn to care about Castiel, someday, if the angel could only be so lucky, but there existed no universe in which the Righteous Man would spare a single thought to the leader of the reapers.

Nor should there be.

Death didn’t know why he waited.

“Hello, Dean,” Death drawled. This was definitely a huge mistake, and yet there he was, appearing at a human’s beck and call like a lapdog. Or an angel.

‘ _Everything’s under control, sir,'_ Tessa quickly assured him.

‘ _I’m sure it is.’_

He stared the boy down. Determination was written in every line of the young face. “I'm busy, Dean. Talk fast.”

“I have something of yours,” Dean began imperiously.

“You mean my ring? I recall loaning you that temporarily.”

Death obviously did not draw his power from a piece of jewelry. With the end of Lucifer’s reign, it was an inert trinket: a remnant of darker days with no intrinsic value. Unfortunately it _did_ technically belong to him, and as such could catalyze summonings and location spells. Minor annoyances that he very much wished to avoid, just in case.

“Well, if you want it back...” Dean began, his confidence already wavering.

“I'm sorry, you assume that I don't know where you've hidden it.” As usual, the boy's courage came bundled with an exceedingly stupid plan. “Now we've established you have hubris but no leverage, what is it you want?”

“Lucifer's cage. I figure you're one of the few people that can actually jailbreak it.”

‘ _How dare he ask that?'_ Tessa interjected indignantly. ‘ _Don't do it, sir.’_

“Do you?” Death drawled, slightly annoyed by the interruption.

“Sam's soul is stuck in that box.”

“I've heard.”

“And our other brother is trapped in there, too,” Dean added as an afterthought. “Michael rode him in.”

“Dean, quit shuffling and deal.”

“I want you to get 'em both out.”

Sometimes when Dean asked for favors, it sounded exactly the same as giving orders. Maybe he and God weren't so different after all.

Typical. So typical. Of course Dean would fall back into his cycle of martyrdom, reaching for things no one had any right to want. Of course he would risk everything to bring Sam back, even his own life, even Sam’s. He always asked for too much, took without giving, haunted Death’s every step without meaning to.

“Pick one,” he heard himself say over the odd roar that swelled in his ears.

“What?” Dean cried.

“Sam's soul or Adam's.” Death tasted something hot and vaguely metallic in his mouth.

The boy at least had the decency to look outraged. “But...”

The second Michael’s glory had filled his replacement vessel, Adam Milligan had been shuffled off to heaven. The grandest of archangels would not suffer the sound of a crying child. Death, completely aware of Adam’s fate, could see him comfortably re-watching Aladdin in a heavenly movie theater.

“As a rule, I don't bring people back,” Death pushed on mercilessly. “I might make an exception once, not twice. So pick.”

“Sam,” he replied without hesitation. It was possibly the most impressive display of ruthlessness in Dean's short life. “His soul has been in there for a year, and I understand that it's... Damaged.”

“Try flayed to the raw nerve,” Death murmured, quietly horrified. By Dean. By himself.

“Well,” Dean went on, oblivious to Death's turmoil, “is there any way that you could, uh, I don't know, hack the hell part off?”

Death could easily imagine the scandalized faces of his reapers if they heard such a proposal.

Later, when the pounding that sounded a little like rage and a little like despair subsided from his mind, Death would find himself unable to explain his own cruelty. It was not born of a rational decision to punish anyone. Maybe Death needed someone to blame for the wasted years of waiting for something impossible, and an innocent target took the brunt of his frustration. Or maybe he thought Dean deserved to be haunted by the consequences of caring for a single person above all else, to feel a modicum of what Death had felt.

Maybe he wanted to punish Dean for never loving him again.

‘ _Boss, are you ok?’_ Tessa butted in timidly.

He walked to her side, threw her what he hoped was a reassuring glance. _'I'm quite fine.'_

“What do you think the soul is? Some pie you can slice?” Death continued bravely. “The soul can be bludgeoned, tortured, but never broken. Not even by me.”

“Well, there's gotta be something.”

“Maybe. I can't erase Sam's hell, but I can… put it behind a wall, if you will.” It seemed more and more obvious that he must save Sam, no matter the risk. Regardless of Death's resentment towards Dean, the world owed Sam Winchester. Urging the boy to jump, raising his body and leaving his soul in the pit, Sam's fate traced back to all of Death’s past and present actions.

But Dean seemed displeased. “A wall," he repeated skeptically.

“In his mind. A dam to hold back the tide.” Death didn't quite have the skillset to erect such a wall, but for Sam's sake he was damn well going to try. “Nasty, those memories. You don't want to know what they'll do to him, believe me.” He walked back to the chair, suddenly tired.

He'd experienced it first hand. No creature deserved torment like Sam's.

“Okay, uh, a wall. Sounds good.” Dean tried hard to believe in his own words.

Tessa interrupted. “But it's not permanent.”

‘ _Will you really try to breach the cage?’_ she pressed furiously. _'For one soul?'_

“She's right,” Death agreed noncommittally. “Nothing lasts forever. Well, I do, but…”

“Okay, so that's the choice. Sam with no soul, or Sam with some drywall that if or when it collapses, he's... Done?”

“Yes.”

“Do it,” Dean commanded.

Dean _commanded._

Death rose. He was surprised by the coldness in his own voice. “I never said I'd do it.”

“Well, then what the _hell_ have we been talking about?” the boy asked petulantly, and Death absolutely hated him then. A being so young, a goddamn infant dabbling in matters he could never understand, did not merit the eons Death had pined for.

“Your prize. If you win the wager.” Death's awareness of his own foolishness didn’t stop him from stepping closer to Dean.

‘ _What in the name of the Lord are you doing, sir?’_

‘ _Quiet, Tessa.’_

A number of expressions flashed through Dean's face before he settled on vague discomfort at seeing his personal space so invaded. “Great... What's the bet?”

“Don't roll your eyes, Dean, it's impolite,” Death murmured icily, his mouth inches away from Dean's. “Now, when you fetch my ring, put it on.”

Foolish boy. Accepting challenges before knowing the terms. Always putting others over his own life. It was no wonder he would die so young.

A shady doctor in a dingy room attempted to resuscitate Dean's lifeless body to no avail, and despite his wrath, Death could not help the stab of worry that pierced his core.

How could this insignificant little thing hold all the power? How was it possible? Death could crush him with a flick of his mind. In God’s absence, Death was the closest thing to omnipotence in the entire wretched universe.

_'Sir, I don't understand what you’re doing.'_

_'I'm teaching that stupid child a lesson.'_

Hell was a complete mess. While it had hardly been orderly before the apocalypse, its denizens had organized themselves in a semblance of unification around their trapped messiah. That was the advantage of absent leaders. They stayed perfect in their followers’ minds with very little effort. Leaders who got concrete results could never compete with shadows made of rumors and imagination, and Death suspected that the demons now grudgingly followed Crowley solely to avoid a bloodshed like heaven's. Few felt real allegiance to the king outside of elite crossroads circles, let alone the religious fervor that had once burned inside the Lucifer loyalists.

But chaos was good. Chaos helped.

The ease with which Death slipped through the cage made him concerned about the poor state of hellish security. Thankfully his ring held the bars and his power imprisoned the captives, and the likelihood of anyone else attempting a break-in was infinitesimal.

Most attributed the second opening of the cage to a loophole left by God, as most miracles usually were, and not even the stupidest demon would dare approach a remnant of God's will. God's _actual_ involvement in putting the brakes on the grand plan was nonexistent. Death was grateful for being left any chance at all.

Inside, the cage shone with the obnoxious glory of not one, but two restless archangels.

“Come with me, Sam,” said Death to the charred dot crushed between the two of them.

Death never did have a chance of stealing the only chew-toy in the cage without being caught, but he was nonetheless annoyed when he was spotted.

“You've come to let us out!” Michael boomed enthusiastically. Everything the archangels did was always so unnecessarily huge. They did not understand the concept of an inside voice.

Lucifer, who felt a strong—and very much mutual—dislike for Death, caught on quicker than his brother. “He's not here for us, Michael.”

“The vessel? You came to save the _human_?”

Death smirked. “You two can use the rest of your lives to reconcile.”

When the archangels pummelled against Death in their impotent rage, he dutifully shielded Sam from their attacks.

After she recovered from the shock of receiving a personal visit from _Death_ , the goddess inspected the little soul. “He used to be a demon?” she said with curious wonder.

“Two archangels tormented him for a number of months. It may have quickened the process.”

“Wow, you really scrubbed it out of him. I can’t even tell.” Pana slowly turned him over in nimble hands, stray strands of black hair escaping from her wool cap to whip against the backdrop of the Arctic sea.

“There’s too much damage that I couldn’t erase,” he admitted. He spotted two nosy sailors. They became hurriedly fascinated by their boots after meeting Death's gaze.

She revealed a cheerfully gap-toothed grin. “Oh, don't worry about them, they won't tell anyone about our soul problem. I bring good luck and extra fish.”

“Can you fix him?”

“Mmm.” She hummed. “He’s gonna end up completely busted no matter what we do. We can never remove trauma like that, not even if heaven and hell and the reaper legion get together to help. The memories'll haunt him forever.”

“What if the damage is… voluntarily transferred?”

She shook her head. “Who in the universe would voluntarily take on this kid’s cage scars? Not you, I hope. For all our sakes, we need Death to keep his marbles.”

“An angel.”

Most gods couldn't be trusted with discretion. He would be wary of revealing any sensitive information at all if Pana hadn't been utterly uninterested in rejoining civilization, content to bob in the ocean fishing turbot and shrimp. When a horseman had appeared on the deck of her little ship looking to repair the soul of Lucifer's vessel, she'd welcomed him without asking too many questions. But more importantly, she'd been a reknown healer of souls back in the day.

“An angel, eh? Is this one of your predicting the future things? I’d heard you could do that. Thought it was just hype.” She brushed Sam's cancerous flecks of darkness, perceivable to very few besides him and her. “I guess it's possible to transfer it in theory,” she muttered doubtfully.

“Good.” It couldn't hurt to get confirmation. Now for the difficult part. “I also want to make a wall between his mind and his torment, as sturdily and painlessly as possible. It's why I came to see you.”

“Oh _no,_ I couldn't.” She plopped the soul back into Death's palm. “Do you know how little magic I have left? I’m a million times less powerful than you. The most I do nowadays is bring decent catches and clement weather for my crew. It's flattering that you'd think of me but...”

“Look, I can reap souls, transport them, transform them, put them away, but I was never given the skills to repair them. You were.” His deathly powers had flowed into him directly from God's hand, and flowed out of him just as effortlessly. Yet when faced with creation, Death couldn't figure it out. He felt more clueless than the most unimaginative angel. Creativity firmly belonged to God and humanity, and he could only watch enviously from the sidelines.

“I can't throw that kind of juice around anymore,” she insisted. “These days I can only feed the souls with my fish.”

He began to lose patience. “What is it you want in return?” he asked, as he should have done from the beginning. “Power? Sacrifices? Favors?”

She crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “I'm hiding in the middle of the ocean. What I want is the sea, and the stars, and quiet.” Death felt a small stab of envy. “Bribes won't bring my mojo back, is what I'm getting at. The era of the gods has been over for too long, and even you can't rebuild entire civilizations just to save your one soul.”

“I also can't build a wall out of nothing. The boy is doomed.”

“Well. So don’t,” she mumbled thoughtfully, tracing the contours of Sam with the pad of her index. “You don't have to build from the ground up if you don't know how. Take something already there, and mold it into whatever you want.”

For the next few months, Sam Winchester walked with a tiny chunk of Death's power inside his mind, keeping his pain at bay. Death expected to feel something missing within him, to become ever so slightly slower and more tired. He waited. Nothing happened.

Though his handiwork was crude at best, the wall fulfilled its job and he felt extremely proud. He meant it as restitution, and also as an apology. To them both.

“An eclipse? An entire eclipse, just because the Winchesters asked you nicely?”

He twirled his cane, avoiding Tessa’s scandalized glare. “I am merely trying to nudge humanity over a sizable bump in the road.”

“We can’t change the balance of the world! No interference! These are your rules.”

“This was meant to be. I foresaw it.”

A vague display of omniscient knowledge intimidated any other reaper into shutting their trap, but Tessa knew him too well. She had caught on to his tricks. Maybe he should distance himself from her and bring in a replacement who still feared him.

“There is talk, sir.” Her indignant tone lowered into a confidential whisper. “You breached the cage for them, and then you let them bind you without any consequence. If the hunters have something on you, we need to be warned before it gets out of hand.”

She was right. Of course she was right. The Winchesters were beginning to affect Death’s work. If word got out that a human had bound the master of souls without consequences, he could never explain it away.

He threw her the most piercing glare he was capable of. “What are they saying about me?” he whispered dangerously.

She looked away. They all looked away eventually.

“Not everyone is… well. There are many different factions. But the really indignant ones say that you’re endangering all of us by playing favorites.”

“Hmm. Do they really?”

“And I can’t disagree! I don’t know how to defend you!” she exclaimed.

He sighed. He tapped his cane against the Cadillac's bumper a few times.

No more indulgent visits. Dean had been buried once before, he could be buried again.

“My interest in the Winchesters stems from their relative usefulness. Nothing more.” It was a lie, but he hoped it would soon become the truth. “If anyone sows discord in the ranks, shut them up. Tell them we have enough to worry about with the rogue angel wreaking havoc.”

“It’s not that simple.” She sighed in frustration. He disliked to see her so distressed.

“What is it?”

“Have you met that Winchester boy before?” she asked cautiously. “There seems to be something going on between you two.”

“Tessa, I’ll admit a certain fondness for you, but that doesn’t preclude you from treading carefully in my presence.”

“I… Of course, sir.”

With a curt nod, she was gone. Her pork kebabs cooled on the shiny hood.

No, decidedly, Tessa and him were not friends. Beings like him didn’t have friends.

The reaper in front of him stood ramrod straight, petrified by the prolonged silence. Being the physical manifestation of Death had a way of turning his every move into a terrifying power-play, but in truth he was stalling.

He picked his cheeseburger apart. "Opal, is it?"

The reaper nodded.

Purgatory’s gates laid open and unguarded, heaven was a wasteland of ash because of mistakes that were technically his own, and opportunities to smuggle goods through the shiny new holes proved too tempting to resist for some. If the reapers were a little more ambitious or a little less loyal, open mutiny seemed a real possibility.

"What payment did you receive for your… services?"

"Deals. Favors… Power." She butted out her chin. It took a special mix of foolishness and bravery to take such a risk with the full knowledge that she would be caught immediately. Perhaps there was a similar glint in Dean’s eyes sometimes, usually before he did something righteous and incredibly idiotic. "We’ve watched humanity for so long. I wanted to know at least once," she admitted.

So they’d sold souls to the highest bidder. In return for a moment of pure happiness or of common human pleasure, emotions heady like the contents of an entire liquor store. He wondered if Anna would have done the same, given the chance. Death had certainly disobeyed more gravely in his youth, and he understood the impulse to break the rules, preferably by smashing into them in a big black car. Only God and a blank expanse of lonely regret had managed to suppress this rebellion.

He stuffed a forkful of sesame bun into his mouth, silently considering. Whatever he decided now, there would be terrible consequences for all involved.

“You bartered with the resting place of your souls,” he finally told her. “You sullied your position. I cannot let such behavior go without punishment, do you understand? I may forgive a few small faults, but this is unacceptable.”

She tensed, her entire being scrunched up in anticipation for a blow that did not come. Death sighed.

"I won’t zap you out of existence. I’m not a barbarian."

"Oh, thank you. Thank you…"

He raised a finger, quieting her instantly. “I am exiling your little band of smugglers. You no longer work for me, and will ferry no souls under my name. I also retract my protection from you.”

"Your… protection?"

"You’re on your own, now. Try not to get stabbed," he clarified dryly, chewing on a tomato wedge.

Opal, to her credit, kept her head relatively high, though her shoulders now held a slight droop of shame. “Thank you for your mercy. It was an honor to work under you, sir.”

He almost hated to see her go. They would whisper in hushed tones behind his back, compare his actions to Lucifer and God, condemn his cruelty. Others might consider the punishment too lenient, and demand the complete obliteration of the traitors. But Death had witnessed his share of immortal brushes with mortal joy, seen countless monsters and gods impaling themselves on bloody dead-ends of their own making. Her kind would not last. None emerged unscathed from the alluring clutches of humanity.

An old memory stirred in his mind. Pretty, dead, deadly April, so far away and so long ago. Worse than an angel, no better than a demon, and disgusting by all reaper standards. He wondered which of his reapers would sink so low as to possess an innocent girl. It could be the one right in front of him, for all he knew.

“This is not a blank check to cause chaos,” he thundered, making Opal jump. He purposefully infused his words with a sizable chunk of his true power. “If I see any stragglers go too far, I will find them and zap them. Very painfully. Are we clear?”

“I understand.”

She sounded so soft. Tender. _Afraid_. He almost relented. She had condemned innocents to an eternity in hell, a crime for which he was perfectly within his rights to execute her, and yet he could barely stand to banish anyone.

The poor things were merely curious. They did not desire anything more than what Castiel wanted whenever he looked at Dean.

“Good luck, Opal.”

She left with her chin still up. He hoped it would be enough.

The world had already begun its slow slippage towards annihilation, and none of his decisions could slow it down.


	5. Downward Spiral

God secured Death’s loyalty in an ingenious manner: In the beginning, he had made the angels love him.

Humans could choose, and their faith was exponentially more valued as a result. They were a prized source of renewable energy, and their allegiance established the foundation of heaven and hell’s economy. The angels, however, never received such favorable treatment. Creation did not allow them choice. Most had never met their glorious Father and never would, but their obedience came prepackaged with their existence. In some ways Death equaled or surpassed God in terms of raw power, and continually grew more powerful with practice and time, yet even he could not overcome the subservience ingrained in his programming. And with one clever trick, God had kept the only being capable of posing Him a threat under His thumb.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, Castiel had been a bit cracked from the start.

"Naomi." The doors of her office clanged shut behind him, sealing outside forces from entry. Ion barely pulled out his blade before Death buried him under the Pacific Ocean with a flick of his finger.

He’d always had an affinity for grand entrances.

White and impersonal, the surfaces of Naomi’s office bore an unfortunate resemblance to the blindingly perfect walls of paradise before humanity’s inception. Or maybe that was exactly what she was going for. Angels never did have much imagination.

"I don’t believe we’ve met. Can I help you?" she said, knuckles tense around the edge of her glossy desk. The rest of her demeanor remained collected and cool. Death admired her grudgingly.

Somewhere else in heaven, at the very same moment, Castiel clutched one of Dean Winchester’s many corpses against his chest. He peered at the illusion’s face without expression.

‘ _He’s regressing again,'_ Esper noted resignedly.

“Does your administration employ rogue reapers?” Death cut over the din in his head.

Naomi’s voice was ruthlessly calm. “Is this the reason for your visit? I don’t condone making deals with rogue reapers, no. However, if they’re being contracted under the table, I've no possible way of controlling…”

“Spare me your excuses.” A poisonous thrill of pleasure ran through his body when she closed her mouth, startled. The tables had turned. He could wipe her out if he so wished. Squeeze her mind until it turned to jelly. Under their twin marble masks, they were both acutely aware of how much he wanted to.

Damn it all, he wanted to.

Somewhere else in heaven, Castiel tried to kill himself, and was barely held back by three of his siblings. His movements were jerky, his eyes crazed, his hands covered with blood. Death had no memory of this. All erased and tampered with, probably. Swimming amidst corrosive patches of white, the lucid memories were few and far between in this particular stretch of his past.

“If you’d announced yourself first, we could have welcomed you with the fanfare you deserve,” Naomi barreled on despite her moment of weakness. “Gracing us with your presence is an occasion worth celebrating.”

“Spare me your banalities.” He crept towards her desk nonchalantly, his age and bare power crackling in a rare display outside his physical body. She would feel as helpless as Castiel did, he'd make sure of that. “I want a list of the rogues heaven has contracted. I want to know which angels they answer to. And I want their smuggling routes, if you’re competent enough to know them.”

She stood, her face inches away from his and absolutely unruffled. “Yes, I could give you the names you want.” Death almost expected her to unfold her wings in a desperate need to show off. A more arrogant angel might have done it. “But I want something from you in return.”

Death had to smile. “In return I might let you live. Thus far I’ve not meddled with your... projects. But given a reason, it would be my pleasure to get rid of you.”

He’d been so secure in the assumption that time had stripped Castiel away. Castiel and his obsession, and rawness, and stubborn hunger. Castiel had died on a rock under God's hand, and Death was the empty shell. And yet Castiel ravaged him now, burned every inch of him with hatred.

“Alright, how about… how about an alliance, then?” Naomi suggested, the very picture of innocence. Death could barely believe she had the gall to suggest such a thing.

Somewhere else in heaven, Castiel wrenched free from his captors and stabbed himself in the gut. He fell to his knees, a crumpled tan dot in a field of dead bodies.

‘ _We’re having a situation with Castiel,’_ Muriel screamed on angel radio. ‘ _He hurt himself.’_

‘ _I’m busy right now,’_ Naomi snapped back.

“I’ll give you the names,” she continued as if Castiel’s grace wasn’t leaking from an open hole, as if her underlings weren’t panicking, as if she had the right to ask for anything except mercy. “And as a sign of good faith, I only want a tiny favor from you. I want the Winchesters dead.”

“NO,” he bellowed. His voice resonated more forcefully than intended, shaking the farthest reaches of every heaven, raising confused human and angel heads. He clenched, and she suddenly found herself unable to move. “You will stay away from them. Do you understand?”

“Yes. Yes!” she shrieked.

Naomi let out an involuntary sigh of relief. Death only realized how close he’d come to snapping her in half when he saw her wheezing and half-slouched on her desk, her hands curled in trembling fists.

“I am older than the universe itself. You’re a jumped-up bureaucrat.” She flattened the folds of her suit. She pointedly did not look at him. “Even if I didn’t need the Winchesters alive for my own purposes, I would never deign to perform as your personal fly-swatter.”

“What role can they possibly still play?” she hissed. He could fill entire planets with things she knew nothing about. “Those two dumb apes don’t have a shot at closing the gates of hell.”

“Very well. Then, we have no deal. After I dispatch you, I will reap my merry way through this white wasteland until someone _gives me my list_.”

That shut her up. The devious little wheels in her head spun like a well-oiled engine.

Somewhere else in heaven, Castiel spent his last breath of lucidity reaching for a green hunter’s jacket. His fingers came up short, grasped vainly at thin air before his arm finally became too heavy to bear.

“Fine. I’ll work around the Winchesters.” Naomi lied flawlessly. If Death did not already know of a future murder attempt in a dusty crypt, he never could have seen through her dishonesty. “How about… I give you the list, and you give me the location of the angel tablet?”

So that was how she’d found the damned tablet.

Death sighed and drummed his bony fingers on her immaculate desk. Crowley had talked right away, and he didn't understand why angels had so little self-preservation. “Alright, here’s what we’ll do,” he finally said. “You will give me the names immediately. This is not negotiable. Then, I want you to find a way to deliver Bobby Singer’s soul to heaven. Do it discreetly, and keep my involvement out of it. Then, we may talk about any further... alliances.”

His past forced his hand once again, but he wouldn’t take it laying down this time. This time he would bite back. Take out as big a chunk as possible.

“Help the Winchesters’ mentor?” The wheels in her mind turned furiously. Plotting, measuring, weighing the outcomes and advantages. “Are you sure?”

“You may remember that an insufferable crybaby bound me to his will, once. Throwing him back in his cage was a team effort, and Bobby Singer was part of this team. There is such a thing as gratitude, you know.”

Somewhere else in heaven, Castiel lay dying, dying, dead, finally freed from his prison.

There was also such a thing as revenge, the dangerous part of him whispered. For a glorious, crazy second, when he felt Castiel’s life slip away, Death decided to smash her to bits. Revenge at last for the thousands of Deans that littered the floor of his mind to this day. Samandriel’s death was her fault, the slaughtered Biggerson’s employees were her fault, even the plagued Egyptians screaming under Moses' firestorm were her fault, and Dean’s face, his cheekbone disappearing under bruised flesh, the wet crack of his skull, one perfect green eye brimming with tears through the ruin and blood, stubbornly believing himself invincible because he believed in Cas, believed in what they were, praying, reaching, begging...

He stopped.

_What was wrong with him?_

“Well, I really don’t think antagonizing Crowley would be beneficial to...” Naomi prattled on, unaware of her close brush with death.

“The tablet is in Lincoln Springs, Missouri,” Death cut in. He felt tired of heaven, tired of the world, tired of her.

“Oh. Um... Thank you.” Naomi seemed understandably surprised by his sudden collaboration. “I’ll see what I can do about the old hunter, then. I’m sure an alliance between us would be lucrative for both sides.”

“Give me the names of the rogue reapers, Naomi,” he sighed. “Cut all ties with them. Then I’ll be out of your hair, and you can return to your hobby of tormenting Castiel.”

“It's not torment. I'm fixing him.” She seemed insulted, as if he were the one who'd wronged her.

“Why didn't you leave him in purgatory?”

She smiled behind her desk, back straight, hands curled, looking maddeningly distinguished. “You're the great reaper of all. You know why he's special.”

Somewhere else in heaven, three angels gaped at an impossible sight. It was nothing short of a miracle. A benediction from God Himself. A token of his infinite love and compassion reborn in a bed of ash.

Somewhere in heaven, Castiel blinked awake and realized his hell wasn’t over.

“You don’t have to do it, sir,” Tessa whispered into his ear. She was the only one who dared approach him. The rest of them cowered in silence.

“I rather think I do.”

“Is it really necessary to slaughter them in front of an audience?”

A sea of reaper eyes seemed to look up at once, reproachful.

They didn’t flinch when they saw their leader chained to an angry little angel as long as it was part of the plan, and yet they doubted him now. After everything Death had done for them, they still preferred their God's big plan. Incredible _._

“I warned you!” Death spoke, and all of the lights in all the households on the planet simultaneously flickered in fear. “I told you I would dispense retribution if you stepped over the line. Do you think Death makes idle threats? Dare you _mock_ my power?”

In the middle of the mob, where the band of rogue reapers knelt on a bed of blue petals next to Death’s old desk, not a sound was heard.

“Please listen to me just this once,” Tessa pleaded in a panicked voice that sounded nothing like her own. “You never listen to me, and it’s not my place to say anything, but just this once, just _once_ , sir. We always trust you, we always follow you. We bowed our heads and reaped through an apocalypse because you told us so. None of us ever dares to oppose you. Why do you think it’s happening for the first time now? Could it be because you're making a mistake?”

Somewhere in heaven, Naomi drilled into Castiel’s right eye with a steady hand, and the angel’s silent scream pierced through Death’s head. He flinched visibly. A few rogues noticed and immediately pretended not to, but it was too late, Death had showed a sign of weakness for the first time in known history.

A sudden wave of lucidity hit him.

He was about to _execute_ his reapers. Not even Michael or Raphael had displayed such cruelty to their own.

He was too old and too wise to seek revenge for a world long gone. He should be able to distance himself from Naomi like he always had. Lately the tight lid he kept on his emotions seemed to unscrew itself whenever his attention wandered elsewhere, keeping him on edge at all times. Corpses littered his vision. Green jackets pooled with blood under harsh fluorescent lights. Time had come and died under his watch, and that green jacket _still_ burned under his eyelids. It haunted him as if he were dying in a pile of his worst fears to this day.

No, the rogue reapers were not the root of the problem. Neither was Bobby Singer’s unwarranted time in hell, or even Naomi’s cruelty.

It was _him_. Why must it always be him?

And Death couldn’t do it, because _he_ wouldn’t. The boy wanted to save everyone he came across, save everyone in the whole cursed world. He would never kill those under him simply to set an example.

“Get out of my office.”

The exiles didn’t move. They gawked at Death uncertainly.

Ming was the one who spoke up in the end. “You’re letting us go, sir?”

“Next time I’ll kill you on sight.”

The rogue reapers scattered. The rest stayed behind, shuffling uncertainly, silent questions hanging on their lips.

“Leave! All of you!”

Finally, he turned to the lone figure standing by the lilies, her arms crossed in defiance. “Why are you so intent on disobeying me, Tessa?” He did not remember her being so unbearably stubborn. Maybe she'd listened too closely to his advice. Maybe he was a bad influence on her.

“Can I talk to you, sir? Just the two of us?”

“No,” he said brusquely, “and I expect you to follow my commands. You are not exempt from them and you are not special.”

She disappeared without a word.

‘ _The angels are falling.’_

That was when the earth screeched to a halt. The reapers stopped reaping, the demons stopped peddling their sins, the monsters and humans stopped doing whatever selfish things monsters and humans were wont to do. In that small sliver of time, all eyes instinctively turned to the sky, though most couldn't consciously sense the unbearable screams coming from it.

‘ _Oh my Father from on high.’_

‘ _Sir? Sir, what's happening?’_

‘ _The angels! They… oh, their wings are burning!’_

‘ _Why?”_

And when the missiles of flame collided with the earth, the reapers’ voices swelled into shouts.

‘ _We have to help them! Don’t we? Shouldn’t we help them?’_

‘ _Who did this? How is this possible?’_

‘ _Maybe Lucifer is back!’_

‘ _An angel fell about three kilometers from my position. With your permission I am heading there now, boss.’_

“Metatron has closed the gates of heaven,” Death announced flatly.

The reapers stopped their chatter. Their communications, constantly reverberating with a low buzz of advice and jokes and anecdotes, were uniformly quiet.

Tessa’s voice piped up in the stunned silence. So calm. So defiant. ‘ _What does that mean?’_

“I warned you during the apocalypse. I told you the worst was still ahead. It’s here now.”

And a voice, a new shrill voice echoed across their minds from the edge of the gates. ‘ _It’s closed. We can’t get in. The souls can’t get in!’_

Death hated using the God excuse to explain away their problems, though it worked more reliably than any other.

“It's part of God's plan,” he told them, and they chose to believe him. They gritted their teeth and worked through the steadily growing agony inside the veil. They did not question him, or God, or the cruelty of the plan. Death didn't understand them. Nobody deserved such faith.

Death didn't fear the end of the world, exactly. Occasionally he even looked forward to the end, the true end, when he could finally hang up his mantle and get some well-deserved peace and quiet. There was no doubt that he'd been alive too long.

If Death had been allowed a longer and fuller life when he was still Castiel, that would’ve been a different thing altogether. But Death and Castiel moved in very different circles nowadays. The love of Death's particular life had been dead for a long time, and longer with each passing day.

The world itself seemed to grow tired, to dog-ear at the edges, to creak and groan for anyone who listened.

Perhaps after it was all done with, God would find the kindness to build a new world where free will didn’t come at such a heavy cost. And then there would be no use for heaven, or hell, or a reaper of all.

“You _dented_ my _car_.” Death’s surprise stemmed from the sheer stupidity of committing such an aberration.

Abaddon strolled up to him leisurely, sultrily, her feline walk calculatedly seductive. Her lips were the color of her hair. Against the backdrop of a darkened suburban neighborhood, she seemed to glow like a cigarette butt. “I’ve always wanted to flirt with Death,” she cooed.

He rolled his eyes.

“Well, well,” she went on cheerfully, “won’t you give me a kiss?”

Words could scarcely express how unimpressed he felt. “I assume you want to make a deal.”

“Oh sugar, that’s just what I had in mind.” She reached towards his face, presumably to stroke it or some other nonsense, and he thwacked her manicured hand away with his cane.

“No,” he said firmly. “I’m busy and I don’t like you.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Fine. Here’s my proposal, you skeleton.” He was mildly impressed by the speed with which the alluring lilt of her voice turned into disgust. Death preferred her honesty. “I’m going to be queen of hell very soon, and you’re going to get rid of my obstacles. Otherwise I’ll butcher your pretty boy-toy.”

 _No._ Not _her_.How did she know?

He stayed solid. He gave nothing away. The stakes were too high to lose control. He’d spent a lifetime repressing his feelings, and he would not fail now.

“I believe you were mislead,” Death began smoothly. “I’m quite a bit older than the universe. I harbor no particular interest in toys.”

“Oh pleeeease,” she rolled the vowel as long as it would go. _She_ was being condescending toward _him_. Not even the Winchesters were so obtuse. “That delicious little thing who looks like leather and sex? It’ll be my absolute pleasure to carve out his eyeballs and crush them between my teeth.” She licked her lips. Her tongue looked scarlet, like her lipstick. Death found it sickening.

Even though he still loathed Naomi with every fiber of her being, she had proved herself smart, calculating, and far too old and wise to provoke Death’s direct wrath. Abaddon was unpredictable and overconfident in her abilities, both of which made her dangerous.

“Perhaps you don’t understand what I am,” he said, his condescension even more obvious than hers. “I hold more power in my littlest toe than all of hell combined. Your threats are adorable, but nevertheless a grievous waste of my time.”

She laughed uproariously, her teeth white and straight and as sharp as the wingtips adorning her eyes. “Did you think you could hide the way you dote on that human? It’s not your best kept secret. I poked a few angels, skinned a wayward reaper here and there, and then it came pouring out. Your dirty little secret. What an old creep you are!”

Death closed his eyes. He should have killed the rogues himself, he saw that now. As usual, his mercy came back to bite him. “I don’t _dote_. On anyone. And I don’t spin ludicrous theories based on your infatuation with maggots. The least you can do is show me the same respect.”

She grinned an exceedingly unpleasant grin.“You know the first thing I’ll do? I’ll rip off his sigil. I’ll torture a few of the innocents he tries so _hard_ to save and keep him wide awake for every second of it. Each day there will be offerings brought to us, and he will see his own hands slice their flesh, and he will hear every scream. Then, when he breaks, I will chop off parts of his body, his nose, his fingers, his hands, his calves. He’s a tough cat. He’ll die off nice and slow, just the way I like. When a reaper finally collects him, there will be nothing left but ground chuck and bits of marrow.”

 _Demons are so unoriginal_ , the small part of Death’s mind that wasn’t boiling with rage noted disdainfully.

Her face collided with the ground.

“Let’s see.” He kneeled next to Abaddon’s fallen body, which he’d pinned to the wet asphalt like a fly under a palm. “First, you’ve wanted to torture the boy since the day you met him. I don’t know why you decided to entangle me in your vendetta, but ignoring your inane ramblings basically changes nothing. Second, if you manage to find the Winchester brothers, _they_ are going to kill _you_. Third, you don’t know how to bind me. Your dead superiors would never reveal such sensitive information to a time-bomb in Cain’s arsenal, which means you pose no actual threat to my freedom or well-being.”

She tried to say something. Death ground her head into the floor. He levelled a questioning stare at her henchmen, and none dared make a move to help their leader. The poor fools would have to crawl back to Crowley if they hoped to escape the wrath of their queen.

“Now,” he continued smugly as Abaddon's minions fled the scene, “We’ve established that, like most of the imbeciles who come to me with charming requests, you have no leverage. So here is my counter-offer.”

He leaned further, careful not to dirty his coat, and lifted her chin with the head of his cane. She spat out wet gravel, met Death’s terrible glare, seemed to notice the endless well of power in his sunken brown eyes for the first time, and finally looked down.

“You’re a blunt weapon,” he murmured, outwardly serene. If only he’d kept so calm with Naomi. This whole ordeal might have been avoided if that stupid Winchester rumor hadn't spread to the angels. “Apparently, your brilliant plan is to kill your way to the throne without giving a single thought to the long-term consequences of your actions, culminating in gutting the crossroads deals. Formerly one of hell’s most lucrative assets, was it not? So tell me, how long will demons suffer your rule if, hypothetically, my reapers stop delivering damned souls into hell? The rats you command will chew you up and spit you out.”

If both heaven and hell shut down, the reapers would riot. No question. Death couldn’t imagine broaching the subject without losing them one stroke, and he didn’t want to think too hard about whether he'd truly go that far to save one man.

Her eyes widened in disbelief. “You’re bluffing! Nobody would ruin their life’s work for a… for some piece of ass! You would never...” She was right, he was indeed bluffing. And doing rather a good job of it, he thought.

He smirked thinly. “I would never? What do you really know about me, little demon? Frankly, I’m bored of everyone treating me like an equal, believing they can manipulate me into performing common murder in their name. I am death incarnate. I can be pettier than you.”

At last, she seemed to understand the gravity of what she’d done. “I shouldn’t have come to you. It won’t happen again, I promise.”

“That’s right. Because I won’t take your life. I can crush you under my heel right now, of course, but I’d rather watch your ambitions rip you to shreds. Much more entertaining. Centuries from now, they will recall your name and mock your pathetic death.”

He'd gone a bit overboard with the threats, but he figured a heavy-handed approach would get through to someone like Abaddon.

If only Dean could see him. He would be proud of his lying skills.

No.

No, if Dean could see him, he’d only see a cruel, vengeful horseman, and he would be frightened.

“Wait, I can make you my king!” she pleaded. “Death, so powerful, so glorious, and reduced to a ferryman? You could be bigger than ever by my side. Who cares about one pesky little hunter? Together we...”

“I want to make this quite clear, _sugar_.” He angled her face close enough for a kiss, ready to land the final blow. “I’m vengeful. I’m crueler than anything you've ever dreamed of. And I would never punish the souls on this planet to save any particular droplet in its mass. No, I would do it purely because you annoy me.”

With one elegant swoop of his long coat, Death strode to his dented car. He moved a gentle palm over the damaged surface, seamlessly renewing the metal and paint before slamming the door and speeding off.

A short time later, he learned that Abaddon had expanded her demon-turning operation en masse to counteract his bluff. She was rash, yes, and arrogant to boot, but apparently not completely stupid. On the bright side, nobody dared threaten him after her disastrous attempt, and Death shamefully considered the trade-off to be worth it.

He'd allowed the sacrifice of innocent souls to serve his own selfish ends. That was what he was now, no better than a lowly demon or pagan god.

The invisible dent on his car bothered him more than he cared to admit.

Death's favorite peace lily drooped sadly in his hands.

Displeased, he healed every yellowed leaf, dried flower, and thirsty branch with a gentle touch of his fingers. It took him a few hours. For once, there were no emergencies that required his immediate assistance.

He prided himself on taking care of the plants in person. There had been a time when he'd allocated a break each day to make the rounds, brush the twigs and fallen leaves from his comfortable chair, and sit content to admire his delicate handiwork. He liked being surrounded by the bushy green of the things he'd helped grow. He could close his eyes and smell the earth and sunlight as he serenely reaped his way around the world. When he felt particularly indulgent, he would amuse himself by piecing together Metatron's stories. His memory, which had been virtually perfect, was eroded from the ravages of time and immense suffering, and he had to angle the edges of the images _just so_ to make them click. Of course he still remembered Dean Winchester flawlessly; every fragment of every moment.

Death’s quiet days of hiding his head in the sand were gone. Every call announced a new emergency, disaster after disaster followed in an unbreakable chain, and demon-on-angel-on-reaper violence destroyed millennia of hard work within seconds. He hardly had the opportunity to get behind the wheel, let alone sit in the calming silence of his underground sanctuary. Not long ago, he'd fancied himself a gardener. Maybe Death was a fool to assume he'd be allowed a luxury so huge.

‘ _Sir, I couldn't find Sven at his post. I think he might have defected._ ’

Death let himself enjoy a last instant of respite, hiding his face in his hands and inhaling one last breath of serene photosynthesis.

‘ _Alright, I'm coming._ ’

He cupped her shrunken spirit in his hands. “Wake up. Don’t be afraid. Wake up, Tessa,” he ordered.

She opened her eyes with a start, swirling away from him in fright.

“It’s me,” he reassured her. “You may be feeling a bit disoriented at the moment.”

“ _I’m dead!_ ” she screamed. Death carefully blocked her voice from the perception of the other reapers. “It’s supposed to be over! Why am I still here? What did you do to me?”

“You’re not dead.”

She gaped at him. “The first blade…” She patted her chest, searching for a hole.

“The blade is a jawbone. I get the last say on who lives and who dies, not some nasty bit of demon business.”

He’d brought her back too easily. He’d plucked her up, sealed the wound, and expected nothing to happen. And there she was.

No one deserved so much power.

“It’s a lie. It’s all a lie, isn’t it?” she screamed, finally unfettering the terror and loathing she’d kept hidden for months. “Reapers don’t have choices! We can’t fall, we can’t make mistakes, we can’t even die if you don’t want us to. You pretended to be powerless to make me feel sorry. You manipulative bastard!”

That was the problem with becoming attached. Everyone amassed so much more ammunition to hurt.

“You don’t understand...”

“Everything you’ve ever said to me was bullshit!”

He carefully reached for her trembling shoulders. “The last few months were a terrible burden. I understand that.”

“The... the pain in the veil, you could’ve put an end to it if you wanted, couldn’t you?” she went on hysterically. “You could’ve brought them to heaven with a snap of your fingers. But you don’t truly care about us, and you don’t care about the souls. You're just like Castiel, you only care about that _goddamn Dean Winchester_!”

Death let go of her as if he were hit by the fury of God. “That’s not true,” he lied instinctively.

Even with a mind as unravelled as hers, she saw that she hit a nerve, and backed off. There wasn’t a single cruel bone in Tessa’s body no matter the depth of her despair.

“Why did you bring me back, sir?” she said, her voice significantly softer. “You’ll let me die if you even cared about me a little bit. I can hear the sound of their suffering again and I can't take it.” And it was back, that certainty on her face that Death had always envied.

“Listen. You do have a choice. If you really want to go, I’ll kill you here and now.”

“Do it.”

“Let me finish.”

She held Death’s bony knuckles delicately between her fingertips. “I shouldn’t have said… But please...”

“No. _Listen to me._ ” He lowered his voice feverishly, though he knew no one else could possibly hear. “I want you to go rogue for me. Your death is common knowledge, no one will suspect you. A long time ago I cracked an opening in heaven’s barrier that even Metatron isn’t privy to, and I can show you the way in. Tell a few trustworthy reapers if you wish, form a taskforce to lighten the load, whatever you think is best. I have faith in your judgement. If you become skilled enough, you can start freeing innocents from hell and delivering them back onto heaven. You can undo the transgressions of the rogue reapers. But for now, your task is to lighten the veil. You can make them stop screaming, Tessa.”

 _Please stay. Please don’t leave me yet_ , he begged silently.

“You have a choice,” he went on, and his hurt was at least as profound as hers. “I was never given a choice. So will you do something to ease the suffering, or will you give up?”

She remained quiet and still. He had foolishly hoped for gratitude.

“Sir, I’m sorry. It’s too much.” She appeared genuinely apologetic. “Even if I did what you want, I can’t save them all. The millions who’ll stay trapped, who will help them? Not you. Not me. Not when the gates stay closed.”

He almost laughed at his own hypocrisy. Who was he to convince anyone to _live_? When did he ever acquire that particular power? Even if he wanted to deny the relation, he remained little Castiel, praying for salvation, slowly going insane on a piece of jagged earth, carving out pieces of himself to pass time. Death’s will to live had died with his two stubborn boys and never reemerged, not even when he’d met them again. He couldn't put Tessa through the same ordeal.

“You’re right. Nothing we do is ever enough.” His lips curled into a bitter grimace. “You can’t save enough of them, and you don’t trust me anymore. I know you want to leave. You have every right. But heaven - I swear to you that heaven will open again soon. Do you want to be here to see it? You need only wait a little while longer.”

“You care a lot more than you let on, sir.” Her smiles were so sad, always so terribly sad. He hated them. It never took much to ruin him, not as an angel and not now.

“Well, I can’t show any modicum of weakness, can I? When I do, nosy reapers accuse me of being in love with Dean Winchester.”

She managed a small chuckle. “That was unfair. I’m sorry. And… thank you.”

“I can’t fix my mistakes. I’m not allowed. You’re all I can do, Tessa, you’re as far as the rules can bend, and I’m not certain there won’t be a reckoning for us.”

He palmed the pommel of the cane and effortlessly snapped the black wood in two pieces, startling her.

“Sir?”

He peeled away long strands of ebony until he saw glints of silver, and carefully scraped off the smaller chips of wood around it. “Here. Regardless of your ultimate decision, you should take this.”

She looked at it warily, running a finger over the sharp edge. “Why is there an angel blade in your cane?”

Weapons looked grotesque in a reaper's hands. Death couldn't get used to the sight of it, and yet if he wanted to keep her safe, he must override his repulsion.

“It used to be mine,” he deflected. “Now it's yours. If you want to keep living, you'll need something to protect yourself on your missions. If you decide otherwise... well. You have a way out. No one can stop you.”

She waved the sword, slicing the air clumsily, and he loathed it instantly. Not everyone was meant to be a warrior like him and the Winchesters.

She stilled, and looked down at her chest where the wound used to be. “Did you bring me back to save the souls or because you missed me? Can you tell me that at least?”

“What does it matter?”

She sighed in exasperation. “What I'm asking is... whether you want me to stay for my duty, or to stay for you.”

“I am sending you on a mission to unburden the veil and restore the balance of the world. I don’t allow myself to get attached to the workers in my employ.”

The remarkably annoying thing about Dean was that he never read between the lines. He never allowed himself to. But Tessa was always honest to a fault, with Death and with herself, and she knew the answers to the questions he couldn’t answer.

“How old is this secret pathway to heaven?” she asked weakly, already impeccably business-like. She cloaked herself in the guise of a brown-haired girl, and made herself a black jacket to hide the blade in the seams.

‘ _I understand,’_ she meant. ‘ _I forgive you.’_

And back in the earliest days, when he'd dug a thin tunnel between heaven and purgatory, he'd never expected to show this escape hatch to anyone. Dean and Sam’s future safety depended on absolute secrecy. Tessa would never understand the terrible a price he’d paid to save a few souls. No one would.

“Oh, the path is quite old. Older than Cain and Abel.”

Tessa nodded. “Alright. Show me the way.”

“Tell me if you detect anything strange in the sky,” Death decried out of the blue.

The reapers, quite reasonably, assumed that the angels would fall in flames for a second time, probably followed by the entirety of heaven's souls, and maybe even the entire structure of heaven itself. Death, characteristically, did not specify what he meant, refraining from his usual sarcasm or deadpan jokes. This served to worry the reapers even further. They dreaded the fatal day when all of heaven would crash into earth. Maybe. Possibly.

And then, they witnessed a miracle.

When Metatron’s narrow stairway finally burst open, with none other than an exhausted Castiel on the other side, a torrential exodus crashed against the tiny hole. Death silently widened the opening to accommodate traffic and bartered with the remains of heaven’s soldiers to allow the reapers special dispensations.

Believing that their leader’s cryptic command had pertained to heaven’s grand re-opening, the reapers let out a collective sigh of relief, and the load on the veil enthusiastically returned to a healthy weight.

Everyone’s gratitude for Castiel petered out as they watched him take off after Dean Winchester. Again. Nobody understood what was so attractive about that man. Castiel did not seem particularly worried about wasting the good favor of his peers, nor about his imminent death from poisoned grace. In the end, the general consensus was that despite his heroic deed, he remained as inscrutable and borderline insane as before.

Death gave the reapers a few rare compliments and brief smiles, impressed by their efficacy, but he continued to cast his gaze into the reaches of space. He waited for disaster. Soon, now.

Death held many secrets, but there was one in particular that he kept particularly close to his chest. He told no one, mostly because he didn’t want to think about it.

The Mark of Cain rendered Dean effectively immortal.

No one aside from Death could _truly_ be called immortal, of course. Cain and Dean's immortality more closely resembled the three other horsemen: it was theoretically impossible to kill them by physical means.

The closer to imminent doom the world drifted, the more Death realized how very badly he didn't want to lose Dean a second time.

The monstrosity wielding the First Blade wasn't Dean, though. It made the decision easier. And though Castiel would no doubt disagree with most of Death's policies, this was one last thing they could both acknowledge as irrefutable truth.

_At least he dies human._

“Uh, am I dead?” It was a reasonable question to ask upon discovering Death seated on the corner of one's bed.

“No, you're alive for now. I need to speak to you, Sam.”

“Oh. Hi.”

“Hello,” Death graciously replied.

Sam yawned, rubbed his face, and nestled back into the covers. “Remind me not to eat chili before bed. Gimme weird dreams.”

“Of course. I'll make note of that and take time out of my schedule to tackle your crucial chili problem.”

“Uh...” Sam rubbed his eyes. “Are you actually here?”

“It's really me, yes.”

The boy seemed quietly horrified by the realization that Death might be real, and not just a figment of his sleep-deprived imagination.

“You wish to remove the mark of Cain from your brother's arm, if I'm not mistaken.”

He handed Sam a folded note. Sam frowned at it, then switched on his bedside lamp to take a closer look. He flipped the paper upside-down, and then back again.

“What's this? It's not Enochian or Latin.”

“Hebrew. Human magic.”

 _But I don't know Hebrew_ , Sam's facial expression said. “And it will turn Dean back? Just like that?”

It could never be that easy, could it? He remembered Gadreel's screams as Crowley pierced Sam's skull. He remembered Dean's.

If he'd kept his cane, he could fiddle with it and keep his hands occupied whenever he looked away from his interlocutors. He often did the same with food. It made it easier to lie. He missed his cane very much.

“No, Dean can't turn back 'just like that',” he admitted, tugging at an invisible thread on his sleeve. “The damage is done. But you may use this location spell to find Cain. I suggest that you visit him and grovel at his feet.”

“And then Dean will be human again.”

“Perhaps. For whatever that’s worth.”

“Thank you.” Sam nodded gratefully. Determinedly. He'd already conceived of three different unsavory methods to make Cain talk. “And, by the way, I'm sorry I didn't follow you to heaven last time. I was going to go but then stuff... happened...” He paused, unsure how to continue.

Death's expression softened. “I'm afraid my presence was nothing more than a fever dream, Sam. Bobby Singer and your brother were imaginary as well.”

Sam face-palmed in a mixture of embarrassment and resignation. “Heh. I guess I was pretty ready to die.”

Death shrugged. “Wishing for death is a perfectly reasonable outcome of being alive, I find.”

Sam made a face. “That's dark.”

“It's what I do.”

“Not that I don't want to be alive, exactly,” the boy continued rapidly. He seemed relieved to unburden himself to someone, anyone. Even if it wasn’t the place nor the time to do it. “I mean, yeah I'm tired, everything keeps going to shit, and that's _bearable_. I can take that. It's just that if I'd left when I should've, if Dean had let me go, Kevin would still be alive. Demons would be locked away in hell. If I could take it all back...”

“Sam, forget what you think I told you. _I'm_ the real deal.” He let a tiny lick of his true power run through the surface of his vessel, and Sam's eyes widened considerably. “If you want my real opinion, I'll give it to you. You are not special. You are not directly responsible for the deliverance of the human race, nor should you be expected to trade your life for anyone else's. You are just a boy, and you are alive now, and you still _want to live._ That is a precious gift. Hang on to it. Cherish your stay. Your brother will not be able to realize this in time, but you might.”

Sam looked down at the note. “Are you saying it's too late for Dean?” he asked hesitantly.

“I...”

Death clenched his jaw. He pressed two fingers onto Sam's forehead. “Wake up, Sam.”

Sam woke up in the middle of the night, confused by his chili dream. He found a crumpled piece of paper clutched tight in his hand and the ink of an illegible location spell staining the flesh of his palm.

Somewhere, Castiel had found a home with the Winchesters. He was human and happy.

Not long, now.

Death remembered how the words rang. “ _Dean Winchester is saved._ ” They sounded like bells. Like victory and salvation. Such a grand voice coming from such a small injured thing, bleeding wings and bleeding grace, the single bright dot of the righteous man secure in his gentle grip.

When Dean died, there were no bells. No words. Only the strident scream in Castiel’s twin hearts and the indifferent silence of everything else.

Death almost closed his eyes. When he had looked upon Dean’s naked soul last time, the righteous man was busy tearing sinners to ribbons in the darkest marshes of hell. Some of the singeing remained at the edges of him, even safe within heaven. And yet without his wrappings, Dean seemed worse than naked. Death was invading his privacy. He had no right to be here.

The legs of Dean’s chair screeched against the linoleum as he sprung up. Sam startled to attention. The memory of Mary Winchester serenely washed a dish, her hands white, her hair golden.

Dean marched directly in the intruder’s face in lieu of a greeting. Crowding into Death’s personal space, his face inches away, he bellowed, “Where's Cas?”

Sam laid a warning hand on his shoulder, which he swatted off.

"Come on, you gotta tell me," he went on just short of begging. "Is Cas alive?"

"Hello Dean,” said Death.

Dean took a step back, assailed by a vague feeling of dissonance.

It would be selfish to wish for that elusive spark of recognition so close to the end. Dull disappointment stabbed him when Dean, as always, saw nothing behind the skeletal face. Death could not understand why he continued to bruise himself wishing for impossible things.

The memory of Mary bustled in the fading light of the kitchen. She sang an old song under her breath, her head bowed over a mop, her hair a cascade of sunlight. The sound resonated sweetly inside Dean’s corner of heaven.

Dean’s beautiful soul took a shaky breath. “Okay,” he said more level-headedly. ”I’m sorry. I meant no disrespect. If... if you know what happened to my friend, I’d really like to know. I’m kind of going nuts up here.”

Sam’s attention had gone elsewhere, meanwhile. Instead of facing the most powerful being he’d ever laid eyes upon, he stared at her. It must be odd to see ash and flame made whole inside the faded memories of someone else.

“Castiel… is alive,” said Death. Although Castiel _did_ die, briefly, but there was no need for them to know this.

"Oh." Dean said like it was punched out of his stomach. He passed a tired hand over his face. "Thank God."

Yes. Thank _God_.

"How did Cas survive?" Sam butted in. His confused relief could quickly turn into suspicion, since the boy was neither stupid nor blind.

"I assume he wasn’t as breathtakingly idiotic as you two, and thus avoided an untimely demise," Death explained vaguely. He leveled his scariest look at Sam. Thankfully, Sam looked down at the floor, appropriately intimidated.

"Take a sad song and make it better," Mary half-sang under her breath. “Remember to let her under your skin…”

In the awkward lull, Dean pulled out a chair, breaking the frightened silence.

“So, Death. Mister Horseman,” he announced with forced and slightly nervous enthusiasm. “D’you wanna eat pie with us? My mom’s an awesome cook.”

Death squinted. “Why?”

Dean's brother stared at him like he was the biggest jackass in human memory. “Dude, are you trying to bribe _Death_ with pie?”

"We weren’t expecting you. I've got no pickle chips," Dean said weakly. "And I… I kind of… I need you to get us back to earth. If you can pull Sam outta the cage, this should be a picnic for you, right? You don’t even need to go out of your way."

Of course. Death had prepared a speech to counter this very request. He sat stiffly on the proffered chair and quickly ran through his prepared words.

"The title I hold is rather misleading, you know," he began. Anyone who knew him well could hear the atypical hesitation in his voice. "My primary role is to manage the final destination of dead entities. Actively taking lives isn't normally part of the deal. But there _are_ creatures in this world purposefully created to kill.”

"Leviathans?" Dean interrupted.

"…Hmm." Death tilted his head in consideration. "Not a bad guess. Who knows, perhaps this is what God had intended them to be.” Perhaps the Almighty had always planned the last scourge of heaven. Such a thought would have been almost treasonous once upon a time, but Death seemed to have lost most of his loyalty along the way. “However, Leviathan are insatiable. They don’t merely kill, they devour everything without discrimination. Too messy. God needed killing-machines who would be quick, efficient, and perfectly obedient. So he created..."

"Angels," Sam finished grimly.

"Precisely. And you two were killed by angels, heaven’s most terrifying weapon. Have you any inkling why we call them that?" From the perplexed expression on both boys’ faces, he guessed not. "Because angels don’t just kill their prey, they can obliterate permanently if they wish. If they strike someone with the righteous fury of the Lord, those unfortunate souls will _never_ live again. No other creature has that kind of ability. Apart from me, of course, but that goes without saying.”

Sam leaned against a corner of the kitchen table, looking defeated. “So we’re stuck here for good, this time? It’s a more comfy destination than hell, at least."

“Basically. And even if you could circumvent the angels’ power, you must have noticed by now that the gates are closed yet again. Nothing can be done.”

They both turned to an uncharacteristically silent Dean.

"Cas," Dean breathed quietly. “What about Cas?”

A very old, very deep part of Death almost responded to that name.

"You two were among the last few who squeezed in before the stairway crashed down. Castiel will permanently remain on the other side, I'm afraid.” And to the untrained ear it sounded exactly as if he felt nothing.

He couldn't bring such high-profile souls anywhere close to his secret passageway, not when it could jeopardize Tessa’s mission. Death realized the irony of the situation.

The boy lunged at him. "No. No, no, send me back!” Dean roared, clutching the lapels of Death’s coat. “You _bastard_ , send me back down!”

“Stop!” Sam pleaded somewhere far away.

Death tried to ignore those hands. He was so close to Dean’s bare skin, his bare _soul_ … "Absolutely not,” he murmured. “There are rules even I must follow."

“Fine, I’ll be a ghost in the veil, then. I don’t goddamn care, just let me out!”

“No,” Death replied to the eyes filling with tears, the desperate hands, the sickeningly beautiful glow of Dean Winchester’s light. ”Castiel is lost to you now. Go explore your heaven. Find peace. Forget him.”

“ _Why?_ Why now, why this time? Why couldn’t I just stay dead any of these other times, why did you give me what I wanted just to snatch it away, you prick?”

“I’m sorr-”

"You’re not sorry. You think you know what that means and you've got no fucking idea,” Dean spat furiously over the strains of a Beatles song. “I don’t want some fake cardboard cutout of my mom from decades ago. I don’t want old memories, I want a _future_. I want my goddamn future back! It wasn’t enough. Three days! We had three... It wasn’t, it _wasn’t enough_.” His fingers clung to Death's coat as if he’d fall to his knees when his grip finally failed. “I’ll do anything you want. I’ll pass any test, I’ll kill any monster for you, I’ll wear your ring and reap all the little girls you want. Please help me.”

"Dean. Stop it."

"Let me live. I finally... We… I _need to live_."

It came rushing back to Death, slamming into him like showers of burning angels.

_Castiel pressed a palm against a solid chest, felt the frightened flutters of a human heart. “I can feel your heartbeat,” he whispered as if it were a secret, a small treasure hidden in the cocoon of the sheets. Dean’s voice shaking in the darkness, “Yeah. It’s… beating a bit fast.” Wet breaths mingling, “Cas, Cas,” whispered over and over against Castiel’s throat as if to convince themselves they were both still there. And Castiel had loved him and loved him and loved him then, so much it seemed impossible to ever have lived without, to ever have healed from the loss._

“I can’t,” Death said numbly. He tried to shake away the memories, and he couldn't. He couldn't. “I'm not allowed to let you live.”

_A shy smile over a cup of coffee, eyelashes heavy, eternally young. Crinkles around his eyes when he laughed. “A messed up hunter and a fallen angel dude, how’s that gonna work, Cas?” “We’ll make it work,” Castiel replied with the absolute certainty of his kind, thinking that they would have time. Enough to fall together, fall apart, ugly but strong and endlessly worth fighting for. He thought his life had only just begun. He wasn’t wrong._

“You're Death! I know you can take me back!” Dean screamed. “What do you want, my goddamn soul? I'll give it to you. I'll give you any part of me you want. What do you want?”

“ _Cas. Cas, look at me. Hey.” He shook Castiel. His face was covered in soot and blood and illuminated by the flames. “I only just got you. I’m gonna come back. Ok? And you’re gonna come back to me too, because you always do. You always come back to me. Cas! Cas?”_

“Dean, it doesn't matter what we want,” Death tried to explain as the memories threatened to bury him. “We can never have what we want.”

_“No, it wasn’t long enough,” he mouthed disbelievingly, eyes locked on Castiel’s face. His thrashing hand tried to bridge the distance and fell short. “It wasn’t long enough. Please...”_

Then, in a moment of unforgivable weakness, Death slipped. For the first time since the advent of the universe, for a fraction of a second, he let his eyes go blue.

Dean’s eyes widened. “Sonofa-”

Sam reacted more practically. “Get away!” he warned, dragging his brother back by the shirttail and throwing a shaker worth of table salt onto Death’s forehead.

Death frowned. “I’m not a demon,” he said dumbly.

In reply, Sam stabbed a butter knife into Death’s chest.

“I’m not a shapeshifter either, Sam. And this particular set of your mother’s cutlery is made of stainless steel. And besides, you’re in heaven, it’s not even real steel.”

“His eyes changed, right? I didn’t imagine that?” Sam whispered.

Dean didn’t look afraid so much as extremely confused. His eyes darted down at his hands, as if burying them into Death's lapels had contaminated them. He shook his head. “That blue… Your eyes were like… they looked exactly like...”

“I’m sorry,” Death said flatly. Death was an excellent liar. Death was uncaring. Death felt nothing for the humans. “You deserved longer. All of you did.”

“No, wait!”

And then the moment was gone, heaven was gone, and Death’s knuckles gripped the wheel of his car until it snapped off in his hands.

He knew he'd never see them again.

He drove without stopping. He wanted nothing more than to keep going until the end of the world took them all.

“Well we should make the most of it, alright? I want to go find the Roadhouse, maybe Bobby and Jo. Look for Mom and Dad.”

“And Jess.”

“Yeah. Hell, she’s been gone for so long I’m not sure she’ll care about me anymore, but I’d like to see her again.”

“...”

“Dean… Dean, I can’t even imagine. There was never gonna be a scenario where we don’t die young, but I didn’t think....”

“Cas always found me again. Every time.”

“Yeah, but this is the end of the road. You can’t wait for him for the rest of eternity. Oh God, please don’t make me listen to you whine for the rest of eternity.”

“You don’t have to help, dude.”

“For Christ’s sake, of course I do. I didn't suffer through years of your stupid _yearning_ just for kicks. I wish you’d… settle down, enjoy heaven like a normal person, but I won’t give up on you two if you don’t.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re really gonna do this, huh.”

“It can’t end this way. I won’t let it.”

“Then neither will I.”

“She’s lying. Hannah never liked me for some reason, and it's even worse now that she's some head honcho.”

“Or maybe we won’t find an exit because there isn’t one?”

“Three freaking days, Sam!”

“...I know. No, I know. We'll find some other way.”

“Hey, remember what Death told us before I tried to stab him with that stupid tiny butter knife?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“No, I mean… Well, he said that we’re both permanently dead, right?”

“Oh my god, really? Gee, I totally forgot about that.”

“Stop it.”

“You stop it.”

“Dean, Cas was killed by angels.”

“Yeah, which time?”

“Exactly. So maybe Death lied to us? I still think it was something else pretending to be him. Who’s got powerful enough mojo to sneak through the roadblock, though? Shapeshifter? Rogue reaper?”

“We don’t know how Death works. Maybe it’s normal for his body parts to go weird.”

“How's Cas still alive then? The facts don’t line up.”

“...Unless God really brought Cas back.”

“Since when does God make exceptions? Although... huh. The angels were always more surprised than us whenever he popped up again without a scratch.”

“Maybe Cas is special. Maybe… no. Jesus, I don’t know what to believe anymore. I still don’t understand why his eyes… they looked exactly the same as…”

“D'you mean Death’s eyes? When they turned blue?”

“Is it just me or… Did you feel like… did you recognize those eyes, Sam?”

“What?”

“Let’s try to find Ash. We’ll worry about it later.”

Death buried his face in his hands. ‘ _Maybe angels don’t need to breathe_ ,’ someone repeated over and over in his mind. Death had never needed to breathe. His breaths shook.

_Strong hands threw a piece of cloth on his head and practically carried him out, up the staircase and into the delicious twilight air. Everything burned. His entire body burned, his nose and his eyes and his lungs, there was a holy oil fire in his lungs._

_“Cas! Hey, you ok? Try to answer me. C'mon, buddy,” Dean's voice implored._

_Dean's voice. Yes, Dean had gone on a grocery run and wasn't back yet. Dean wasn't in the bunker, he should be safe..._

_“You breathed in a lot of smoke, baby, and you got a few burns on your... your everywhere, but I think you'll live.” Cool lips on Castiel's feverish forehead. Tender fingers carding through his hair. “Hold on, yeah? Hold on for me. Sam didn't come out, I gotta go get him. Stay here. Are you hearing me, Cas? You'll make it through. You have to 'cause I said so.”_

_Castiel tried to open his eyes to look at the origin of the nice voice. His vision watered in pain. He couldn't breathe. How could he stay alive for Dean if he couldn't breathe?_

_“Cas. Cas, look at me. Hey.” He shook Castiel. His face was covered in soot and blood and illuminated by the flames. “I only just got you. I’m gonna come back. Okay? And you’re gonna come back to me too, because you always do. You always come back to me. Cas! Cas?”_

“Who are you running from, Inias?”

“I'm not running!” Inias cried out, almost falling off the bench in his hurry to stand. “I'm trying to make my way to the gate of heaven like everyone else. Just minding my own business.”

Death's coat filled the limited space under the bus shelter, making Inias' half-seated form appear even more shrunken. "Why did you kill them? Tell me.”

He jutted out his chin stubbornly. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I am _Death_ , you pathetic fool.” Death reached inside the angel and twisted cruelly, just as he had with Naomi. After throwing humans and demons around with ease, most angels could not bear the same powerlessness for long. “Tell me!”

“G-God,” Inias stuttered, slumping against the glass like he wanted to melt through it. “God commanded me to do it.”

So Inias was simply a deluded angel hallucinating about God. Was that all this was? Death didn't understand why he still sought to find meaning in the chaos.

“I asked why you fled because of these sigils,” Death continued, defeated, poking Inias's shoulder with the tip of his shoe where a protection ward was crudely drawn in permanent marker. “But also because you're still travelling to heaven's stairway. You turned off angel radio, I assume.”

Inias avoided Death's eyes in a clear admission of guilt.

“You're afraid Castiel will try to find you, and you're taking all possible precautions.”

“Castiel is a lunatic, sir,” he mumbled conspiratorially. “Who knows what he'll do to me if...”

“Do you know the ingredients to Metatron's spell? I do.” Even Death did not have access to the spell's table of contents. It was Castiel, eternally long ago, who had ground himself to the bone in order to discover a few shreds of information. “Take a nephilim's life to close the gates that link heaven to humanity. Steal a cupid's bow to burn the angels' wings. And use Castiel's grace to make a brand new pathway to salvation. Those are the ingredients. But you didn't kill Castiel properly. As usual, he was resurrected. As usual, he was remade in his original angelic model. That means his grace has returned to him. Do you understand now? What do you think happened to your destination, Inias?”

Inias crumpled onto the stained floor of the shelter. “Castiel... Castiel destroyed the only path? You can't be serious.”

“He did no such thing.” Truthfully, Death had come to find answers, not to blame. He was too worn out for anger. But Inias was making it extremely _difficult_. “At this very moment Castiel is attempting to give away his grace to rebuild the gate, a quest he refuses to admit is doomed. The angel tablet has shattered, and the scribe of God, our only other source of information, is being held on the other side of the wall. No one on earth knows how to repair what you broke, not even me. Heaven is sealed for eternity and _you_ are the one responsible.”

“I didn't know. How could I possibly know?”

“Inias, I think Castiel is not the only one you should run away from.”

Death had simply meant his words as cautionary advice. The entire contingent of reapers, even the mildest ones, wanted Inias' head, and murmurs had already begun to spread among the angels with devastating speed. But Inias seemed to take his words for a threat, and cowered on the ground on top of candy wrappers and dried bubblegum. “It's not my fault! Please! I was trying to follow God's orders! I was an obedient son!” he whimpered.

His complete sincerity gave Death pause.

“Did you see Him? Did God truly appear to you?”

Surely the suspicion that engulfed him was unwarranted? He had no proof. Not yet.

“I didn't see His face,” said the frightened angel. “I heard His voice in my head.”

“Who did He sound like?”

Inias' terror briefly faded into confusion. “What do you mean? He sounded like God.”

“He didn't sound like anyone else? Someone you used to know, like Hester? Someone you cared about and lost...”

“He sounded like God. I know my Father's voice when I hear it. You're not an angel, you couldn't understand.”

_The door of the bunker clanged like a portal to hell._

_Perhaps the whole thing was a strange dream. His senses had clearly failed him. He thought he saw two hazy silhouettes emerge from the nightmare heat, both too short to be Sam. Where was Sam?_

_“Sam! Sammy!” Dean shouted at the flames as if he’d read Castiel's mind, but the second figure grabbed him by the neck and threw him onto the singed grass._

_Castiel shakily shrugged off the green jacket someone had wrapped around his shoulders, pulled out the sword tucked in his sleeve, and crawled towards the struggle. Dean in danger. Protect Dean. Save..._

_“Don't,” Castiel wheezed. His throat felt raw and bleeding. He didn't know if anyone heard the plea. “Brother, stop.” He'd happily welcomed his destitute sibling into his new home. He'd trusted him, why did he trust him?..._

_Dean clawed helplessly at the air, the weight of the attacker's knee blocking his airways. “No, it wasn’t long enough,” he mouthed disbelievingly, eyes locked on Castiel’s face. His thrashing hand tried to bridge the distance and fell short. “It wasn’t long enough. Please...”_

_An angel blade plunged into Dean's heart._

_The dark figure pulled Castiel up by the collar. “I'm sorry Castiel,” Inias said kindly, something like genuine regret drawn on the roaring red planes of his face. “I'm sure your intentions are pure, but you destroy everything you touch. I have to do this.”_

_The red blade sliced cleanly through Castiel's throat._


	6. The End of the World, Again

 

Death already knew this story. Every groove of loss, every dent of pain, every fleeting glimmer of thwarted hope tattooed in his past. And Death had been shaped by absence, everything he was and everything he would be, studded with too much grief for any single being to bear.

The absolute certainty that he would lose them all again… He couldn’t take it.

It couldn’t end this way.

And then the world ended.

_“I'm doing a grocery run,” Dean announced as he stood up, wiping his palms on his jeans. “I wanna make pasta.”_

_“Pasta?” Sam said without looking up from his battered copy of A Storm of Swords. “That’s fancy. What's the occasion?”_

_“Well, we have a guest, right? And it's our three day anniversary, Cas and I.”_

_Sam snorted uncharitably. “Jesus, you're the hugest sap ever.”_

_“What? No, I'm very manly!” Dean protested. “Back me up, Cas.”_

_Castiel smirked into his herbal tea. “The season finale of Dr. Sexy made you cry, Dean.”_

_“You suck,” Dean grumbled as he gently kissed Cas on the cheek. “I’m breaking up with you.”_

_Sam wrinkled his nose at their wanton display of affection. “Bring me spinach. And a tub of ricotta. And cool it with the PDA, please.”_

_“Yeah, yeah, you giant fuckin' rabbit. You want anything, Cas?”_

_“Mmm, pizza. Chocolate cookies. Pie... More coffee, the good kind from last time.”_

_Dean shrugged on his puffy green jacket. “You keep eating so much junk and you're gonna get fat.”_

_“Hypocrite,” Sam coughed with no subtlety whatsoever._

_Smiling, Castiel turned to the silent angel seated at the corner of the table, slouched over as if he wished to take as little space as possible. “Would you like anything, Inias?” he asked._

_“Oh no, brother. Thank you. Tomorrow I'll be on my way to heaven’s gate. You won't even know I was here.”_

There was no decision to make because it had already been made, everyone else be damned. After all, time was repeating itself, and Death didn’t care to hide how little his priorities had changed.

He crept deep underneath one of purgatory’s jagged mountains. His one chance of success hinged on the the end of the world distracting the monsters from the huge surge of energy it took to connect the two dimensions.

“CASTIEL,” a disembodied voice boomed, filling every crevice of his head with mind-shattering noise.

He’d almost breached through to heaven’s surface, and he momentarily thought the sound had come from the other side. “Dean?” he asked, dizzy with hope. “Is that y-”

Of course not. He was an idiot falling for the same trick twice.

“It’s been a long time, Father,” Death said softly. “I almost thought you forgot about us.”

God ignored his son's outright rudeness. “YOU DO NOT HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO SWAY HEAVEN’S DESTRUCTION.”

“Not heaven. Two souls. Surely their salvation would make no ultimate difference to you.”

“WHY DOES HE STILL MATTER? THE BOY IS NOTHING.” Dean's voice sounded furious, but who could say if God truly felt anything? “YOU WERE GIVEN THE PRIVILEGE OF WITNESSING THE ENTIRETY OF MY GLORIOUS CREATION, AND YET YOU FIXATE ON HIM.”

It shouldn't come as a surprise. After everything God had put him through, he should expect obstacles. Yet he had to accept that his loving Father could never be reasoned with and would never truly understand, and it pained him to do so even now.

“They hold a certain sentimental value,” Death explained valiantly. “I loyally fulfilled my post, just as you ordered, and this is all I ask for my service. Let me save them. Please.”

“I THINK YOUR INFATUATION HAS GONE UNCHECKED FOR LONG ENOUGH, CASTIEL.” God declared with fearsome finality. “YOU CANNOT-”

“Father! I am… I am flawed.” He’d grovel and humiliate himself if that was what it took. He’d done far worse in the past. “I'm not strong and glorious like you. My… my lingering fondness for something so small is unseemly. But I'm sure that you, in all of your mercy, can forgive me this one weakness? Allowing me the Winchesters would exemplify your great generosity.”

Dean’s voice kept quiet for a long time. “PERHAPS.”

“Thank you, Father. I promise I…”

“YOU MAY SAVE ONE.”

Death vaguely felt Jimmy Novak’s knees collide with the thin floor of his tunnel.

He was so close. So goddamn close.

And God sounded _pleased_. “SAM OR DEAN. ONLY ONE SOUL SHALL ESCAPE HEAVEN, NO MORE.”

“What if I take them both?” Death said through the deafening roar in his mind. “Why must I obey your demands? After what you did...”

“I MAY YET TAKE AWAY YOUR CHOICE, MY CHILD. YOU'LL ACCEPT MY MERCY WITH THE GRACE IT DESERVES, OR I SHALL SLAUGHTER THEM BOTH AS YOU KNEEL.”

Dean let out an undignified yelp and proceeded to shoot Death square in the chest.

“You can’t just barge in like that, dude. It’s rude!” he yelled angrily.

Death arched an eyebrow. “Dude?”

“Uh, um,” Dean stammered, hurriedly re-holstering his pistol into the back of his jeans. “Death. Sir. Mister big kahuna boss guy.”

“Can we speak in private, please?” Death motioned at the open door meaningfully, where half a dozen seasoned hunters craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the last Horseman.

The boy darted his eyes outside the cozy confines of his bedroom, surveyed the crowd, and only hesitated for a second or two. “Yeah, alright.” He smoothed down a corner of his bedsheets and straightened the photograph of his mother one last time before waving at Death to follow him.

Death had not seen the bunker's bookshelves in a number of years, the ivy having claimed every crevice of his office. The well-lit rooms looked clean and homey.

The ragtag group in the library awkwardly stood at attention around a the large pile of guns on the table. “It’s cool,” Dean muttered placatingly at Bobby Singer. The old man's grip tightened around his rifle, but he said nothing. At the top of the staircase, Dean shot one last glance at his brother, who nodded imperceptibly. Dean nodded back, the set of his shoulders more determined.

“Don’t mind them, they’re just a little… intimidated,” Dean clarified helpfully. “Believe it or not, most people don’t get visited by Death very often.”

The Lebanon in Dean’s heaven seemed entirely made up of fragrant autumn leaves and impossibly blue skies. He banged the heavy door of the bunker shut behind him. Death briefly saw flames.

Dean's Chevrolet Impala sat proudly, not a single scratch on her.

“Nice car,” Death murmured with sincere tenderness.

Dean threw him a surprised, earnest smile despite the dark hour. “Yeah, she’s a beauty, ain’t she?” he sighed, patting the car's roof. “You can take shotgun if you want, no one will bother us in here.”

Death nodded and climbed into the passenger side of the well-loved vehicle for the first and last time in the course of this particular universe. His white Cadillac had been destroyed along with Earth, but the Impala felt similar. It felt like the next best thing to going home.

“You’ll warn me if the chompers are coming to chew off my face, right?” Dean offered with a tired grin, his hand resting naturally on the wheel. Every pore of his body seemed to itch for one last drive, but they simply didn't have the time. “I’m sure what you have to say is real important, but I got other crap on my mind right now.”

“The first wave of leviathan will reach this area in slightly less than four hours.”

His face fell. “Could we get ahead of them in cars?”

“It could add six more minutes to your lifespan at most.”

He pursed his lips and processed the information carefully. “What if we fall back to the Roadhouse? Ash put a door in the kitchen that connects straight to us.”

“Twenty-two minutes.”

Dean whistled in defeat. “Ok then.”

“It’s more than nothing.”

“Yeah, I won’t say no to more time.” He sighed, rubbed a weary hand on his face. “Welp, I have four hours and some change left. Whatever it is you gotta tell me, better make it fast.”

That seemed to be the motto of Dean’s life. Everything had to be rushed because of imminent danger. None of them had enough time.

“I can spare you from annihilation,” Death said resignedly. He already knew Dean's answer, and voicing the offer was merely a formality. “I was permitted to make one exception to the slaughter. You or your brother.”

“You can get Sam outta here?” The joy on the boy's face faded as quickly as it had appeared. “He’s going to say no, isn’t he.” And maybe Dean would never have time to learn how to let go of his brother, or how to put anything else first, but this could have been a first wobbly step in the right direction if he'd just been given a chance.

“I already asked him, Dean, and he told me quite clearly that he wants to stay with Jessica.”

“That makes sense. Her aim’s crap, I guess he wants to watch her back and all that.” The hint of affection in his tone did not betray the long hours of merciless mocking whenever she tried to shoot cans, or arguing about who had the best technique when flipping pancakes, or the one bourbon-clouded evening when he raspily told Sam, “At least one of us's found what he's lookin' for, huh?”

“Do you want your brother to survive the end of the world with only me for company? I wouldn’t wish such a fate on anybody. I'm told that I'm quite a downer.”

Dean chuckled weakly. No one else had ever laughed at his jokes. “Yeah, alright, don’t rub it in.”

Death paused. Knowing the answers to the questions typically didn't soften the blows when they came. “You’re not coming with me either. Are you, Dean?”

“Can't leave without Sam.” He shrugged as if his life didn't matter.

“I see.”

Dean would die again. In approximately four hours, there would exist a world where Death would be forced to keep going without Dean. Again.

“Say you smuggle me out, where the hell would you hide me anyway?” Dean pointed out casually, already so reasonable about his own death. It still hurt to hear resignation coming from him. Anyone but him. “Everywhere else sucks worse than heaven.”

“No, there’s a place I know,” Death said solemnly. “A garden.”

He'd often wished to show his garden to Dean, his fuzzy hope a small footnote to busy days. His belongings were so few, back when he was Castiel. It would be nice to show Dean something beautiful of his own making. For the first time, he'd grown something new and completely his, even if his magic could technically be construed as cheating. He'd filed drawers in his mind full with fantasies of bringing Dean to coffeeshops, or tracing the curves of his sleepy limbs, or staring at his darkened profile on a long drive. The little things were hardest to do without, it seemed. And nowadays Death dreamt no more than an angel of the Lord, but maybe imagining Dean's fingers around the heavy blue of a hydrangea blossom was his way of compensating.

“Your garden... is it Eden?” Dean asked tentatively.

Death rolled his eyes. “Of course not.”

“Yeah, obviously it's not Eden. I knew that,” Dean stammered quickly. He disliked letting anyone see the faith under his cynicism. “Eden was pretty boring when we went there last time. And anyway, there’s not much point in Eden if you’re there alone. Not much point in, well, in anything.” He cleared his throat. “So, uh. So where's your garden then?”

Death closed his eyes to better see the hydrangeas in Dean's hands. “Neither of you are coming. It doesn't matter, Dean.”

He made a move towards the door handle, and the boy stopped him with a gentle touch on the shoulder.

“Wait... Listen.” Dean swallowed a few times, looked away, scratched his neck, licked his lips, before finally gathering enough courage to mutter the question he’d meant to ask from the moment he’d put a bullet in Death’s coat. “Cas. Castiel. Is he…?”

“Castiel is alive.” _Castiel has wanted to die since the moment he lost you, but he's alive._

Dean closed his eyes and briefly let his forehead rest against the wheel. “Thank you. That's good... good to hear. That’s… how’s he doing?”

“His feelings have not changed, and he still wishes to save you above all else.”

“Oh. He still... Ok. Yeah.” Dean slumped back against his seat, looking more defeated now than he’d ever allowed himself to appear in front of a monster. “What a damned idiot.” His eyes were angled towards the roof to keep the pooling tears from falling down.

“Definitely the dumbest son-of-a-bitch I’ve come across,” Death agreed.

The boy laughed, full on laughed, honest and sweet and doomed, a tear escaping from his lashes to mingle among the smattering of freckles and pores and blemishes on his cheek. He raised his palm to wipe it off but ultimately left it there to hold up the burden of his head, and closed his eyes as if resting in peace.

“I’ll never see him again,” he whispered. It wasn’t a question.

Death had nothing to say. His well of sarcasm and witty retorts ran dry. _I’ll never see you again either._

He did not deserve this last meeting. Castiel did. Death the indifferent killer, the coward, the bitter monster, the guardian of God’s balance, the opposite of everything Castiel stood for, could not bridge the few inches that separated him from the only thing he’d ever really wanted. The world had never known an instant without the memory of losing Dean weighing on its fabric, and Death was about to let the angel down one last time. He would rob Castiel of the only thing he wanted.

Dean clenched his jaw and took a shuddering breath. Souls didn't need to breathe, but humans did. It was pure instinct. “If you run into him, tell him… tell Cas that I -”

The silence lingered on all the things that were too late to say.

“He knows, Dean.”

 _I understand,’_ he meant. _Castiel still loves you too. He will never stop loving you._

“If I...” Dean stopped, and continued in a shamed whisper. “If I go with you, if I abandon my brother and Bobby and all the people in that bunker who're counting on me... if I leave them all to die, would I see Cas again? Is there a chance?”

It was Death's turn to be struck silent.

If Dean only knew what he was asking, and who he was asking it to.

Dean's eyes hungrily roamed Death's face and he seemed to find an answer. “That's what I thought,” he murmured. “I knew it was a long shot anyway. It's alright, it's... it's better this way. Yeah. I'll keep telling myself that for the next few hours. It won't matter anymore after that.”

Death’s last chance. His only chance and he did not take it.

“There is one last thing I can do, if you wish,” Death said numbly. “I can give you a painless death before the leviathan reach you.”

“Nah. Don’t get me wrong, man, I think that’s very generous, but we’re hunters. If we’re going down, we’re going down swingin’, and we’re gonna take a few levis on our way out. It’s only right.”

“I see,” Death whispered.

“Oh, wait! Right. Before you go...” Dean's tone changed completely. He suddenly seemed closer to an FBI agent grilling a suspect than a heartbroken child. “I’m meant to ask you something. Guess who we ran into, three weeks back.”

“Adam Milligan.”

Dean raised his eyebrows. “Adam freaking Milligan. Remember him? He was in a bowling alley with a girl called Katie. Cute girl, way outta his league. I was kinda surprised because hey, didn't I condemn him to eternal barbecue in the cage? And now Sam thinks you're a manipulative liar and that I shouldn't listen to the bull that comes outta your mouth. It's too bad, he used to like you.”

Sam thought Death was a manipulative liar. Kind, accepting, loving Sam Winchester.

Death clamped down on the car handle until he felt it bend. “Do you share his opinion?”

“It's not that simple,” Dean answered with frustration. Clearly this had bothered him for a long time and he'd impatiently waited for the opportunity to bring it up. “You got us out of trouble every single time we asked. We _bound_ you and you still let us live! Sorry about that, by the way. So why do you keep trying to help us? Why is Adam chilling up in heaven? You said you didn’t care about what happened to any of us.”

Death opened the door so brusquely he made the hinges creak. “I’m an excellent liar.”

“Hey, hey wait. Wait!” Dean bounded out of the car. “Tell me why your eyes turned blue! I deserve at least that!”

Dean's arms opened slightly in entreaty. The autumn wind of his heaven caressed a few strands of tussled hair, playfully curling the edges of his plaid shirt. The boy knew he couldn't be saved, and that finding answers couldn't change his fate. But the one thing Death couldn't stand, so close to the extinction of life itself, was the flicker of incredulous hope on his face.

Dean deserved the truth, deserved to carry the absolute knowledge that Castiel would love him forever, even here, even now. He deserved to have his faith rewarded for once.

God, paradoxes, and the death of universes were not the real reasons Death found himself unable to tell him, though they served as convenient excuses. And it wasn't because of Castiel, stumbling aimlessly inside purgatory. It wasn't even because of Dean, for once. Death would suffocate in his silence, and the failure would be all his.

Dean’s arms were open, clad in plaid and youth and the brilliance of his soul. The fading sunlight filtered through yellowed leaves and drying tears, and his eyes had never looked so clear. And for an infinitesimal moment, he was perfect. It was all perfect.

That was a decent picture to remember him by. That was a good last memory.

“Goodbye, Dean.”

Death did not cry. Castiel did not cry when he fell to his knees next to an empty Impala the first time around. He would not cry now.

On the second run-through of the end, Death saw many very old questions answered. For example, where did the legion of leviathan go after they decimated heaven? How did they disappear so completely?

The answer, of course, was that Death slaughtered them all. He showed them as much mercy as God had for his children.

Another question, even older and more perplexing. How did the leviathan breach into heaven in the first place?

The answer, of course, was that Death’s precious escape hatch, the path he’d entrusted to Tessa with the goal to salvage as many souls as possible, had lead the horde straight in. Tessa didn’t understand how they’d found the door, let alone activated it without reaper magic. Death had his own guess.

And it no longer surprised him that the people he loved would fall at his hand. After all, Death's given purpose was not to save or love or rebuild, but to destroy. And so he did.

“Hello, Tessa.”

She seemed relatively unsurprised to find him waiting for her by the stream. The all-consuming white had already gnawed off half of purgatory, and Death quietly sat on a rock, and that was exactly what she’d expected to see.

“It’s complete mayhem here,” she commented, too exhausted to infuse her words with any inflection. “I’m starting to think that the earth lucked out by exploding.”

“I agree.”

“Oof.” She collapsed on the rock next to him. “You’re going to give up? No more tricks up your sleeve?” she teased, her smile worn but fond. Perhaps she had always been fond of him, and he'd simply never noticed. “I guess we must really be screwed, then.”

“We are _very_ screwed.”

She sobered up again at the naked defeat in his tone. “Any last commands, sir?”

“No. No more commands. It's too late for that. Though I do have one more favor to ask you. Unfortunately there's very little I can give you in return.”

She waved off his uncertainty. “Name it, sir.”

“Guide Castiel to the ruins of heaven.”

She frowned. “Last time I almost got stuck in a leviathan’s jaws.”

Death should go to Castiel himself, but he could not bear the thought of facing him after what he’d done.

“Those Winchester boys...” She hesitated. “They were special to you, then?”

He stared at his hands and remembered the burn of a hand-print. “I’m an old fool, Tessa. Very very old. Incredibly foolish. I've been alive for too long.”

She bent closer. The sweet, sad lines of her face looked starker in the whirling fumes, free from her bindings of flesh. Her gossamer fingers intertwined with his bony ones. “We never tended to agree on much, you and I. But you know what? I’m positive every single reaper would want you to know what an absolute _honor_ it was to serve under you. Sir.”

He bowed his head. “The honor was mine.”

She hesitated, afraid of crossing one last boundary. “And I’m sorry about Dean,” she admitted. “You don't have to tell me what happened, but I am.”

“Me too,” he murmured.

Tessa died eleven days later, and for good this time. Not at the hands of a vengeful angel or demon, as Death feared. She had been ready for a long time, and laid down to rest near the vanishing edge of purgatory. She never woke up. Death took care to reap her in person, and clutching her weary little spirit against him, he did not discover a single shred of fear inside her.

_Everything is dust in the wind,_ he hummed to himself as he reaped the last few spirits in hell.

Years ago, after the whole sordid business with Sam's soul was said and done, Tessa had grudgingly admitted that she liked that line. It made sense to her. It made sense to Death as well.

At the end of the world, Death sang a Kansas song that no one remembered and smiled a sad smile that no one saw.

_“You know the lyrics to Highway to Hell? Who taught you that? Nora?”_

_“I heard it play on your radio and I remembered. Well, I'm not sure if I mastered the melody, but...”_

_“I'm on a highway to hell! Sing it, highway to hell! Highway to hell! Highway to he-ell. Don't stop meeehhh. Come on sing with me, man.”_

_“I'm not sure if shouting is the same as singing.”_

_“...You gotta stop hanging out with Sam all the time.”_

The thick carpet of dried leaves crumbled to dust under his feet.

His hands ghosted over the coleus trees, branches the texture of flimsy straw, their vibrant color wiped out by neglect. The collapsed flower bushes were indistinguishable from the mounds of dead roots trapped inside the hardwood floor. The ivy dribbled from the shelves like scraggly fingers clinging to fossilized butterflies, and the leaves snapped like corn chips, like brittle bones, and the browned blossoms of the hydrangeas were skulls.

Eden. He stifled a bark of hysterical laughter. Yes, Eden indeed.

Light still filtered through the crack, illuminating the graveyard of Death's garden. The last existing pocket of earth.

He wiped it out with ease. His cherished keepsakes were only petals and wood and stone. Not much point in keeping them. Not much point in anything, now that he was alone.

He watched his makeshift haven disappear in an underwhelming flicker, and he felt nothing.

Finally, disobeying a warning so ancient he couldn't remember why he used to be afraid, Death leapt. He wasn't an angel, and didn't need wings to soar through time.

It was upon looking at his own past, fallen shapelessly on a minuscule shard of cosmic rock, that Death understood what a truly superb manipulator God had been. In order for the grand plan to carry on smoothly, God first needed to torture Castiel until he broke.

When he laid eyes on God, he felt certain He could break him again.

“Father,” he greeted.

Dean’s empty eyes sockets peered up from where he crouched. “YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE.”

“I waited long enough. Good thing there is one location where I knew we could talk.”

Dean's body rose elegantly, starkly outlined against an infinity of dying stars, Castiel's lumpy vessel lying at his feet. “WHAT IS IT YOU SEEK, MY SON?”

The real Dean had never, in the entire course of his short decades, looked at Death with open _contempt_. Death wanted to rip those hazel-green eyes out of God's head. He didn't deserve to wear that face. How _dare_ that son-of-a-bitch wear _that_ face?

“The world is approaching its end. I'm here to reap you, as you promised me I would.”

Dean –God– shook his head in amusement. “CASTIEL, YOU MAY NOT REAP ME AT THIS TIME. EVERY EVENT HAS ITS PLACE.”

“ _I'm_ the reaper of all, Father. I'll be the judge of that.”

God's eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “ARE YOU THREATENING ME?”

“Yes. That's what that feels like.” Death stuffed his hands in his pockets. They barely shook at all.

It seemed a fundamental mistake in design to create a creature in charge of every other creature's death, including one's own. Because, Death realized then, God was incapable of destruction. Just as Death lacked the talent to create, God had built angel armies, Leviathan hordes, and an unwilling angel-turned-horseman to bring death in his name. Death knew himself capable of reaping the whole universe if he must, but God had to fashion a meteor just to take out one measly planet.

“CASTIEL,” God said placatingly. Death’s old name coming out of Dean's mouth sounded uncanny, bordering on disrespectful. “I GAVE YOU EVERYTHING. INNUMERABLE LIFETIMES, IMMEASURABLE POWER, A POSITION AT THE VERY CENTER OF MY WORK.”

“You gave me three days!” Death roared. His fists were shaking violently now. “The one thing I ever wanted, and you tore it from me as soon as I -”

“I TRIED TO NUDGE YOU BACK ON TRACK.” God stepped over Castiel's prostrate body and cupped Death's chin carefully. “I SOUGHT TO PROTECT YOU. YOU WANTED THE WRONG THINGS.”

Death couldn't disagree with that. He'd lost his way long ago, and Dean had objectively been the wrong thing to want.

If he were to chalk it all up to a misunderstanding, if he could forgive God's interference on account of manifestly good intentions, this would have been the perfect moment.

Then God drew close, too close, lovingly raked his fingers through his son's hair, and Death abandoned any possibility of forgiving Him.

“Don't touch me.” He pushed Dean's chest away, his movements more brutal than intended. The surprise that flickered on God's stolen face appeared genuine. “Why did you make me choose?” Death hissed feverishly. “Why couldn't I save them both? It meant everything to me and it would've cost you nothing. Your grand plan would stay the same. Every action you took was cruel and unnecessary and _small_.”

Dean's body contorted into something hideously inhuman before God settled back in his disguise. Wearing small, limiting physical structures took practice and constant discipline. His over-abundant power had spilled out in knotted folds of skin. “SMALL? _SMALL?_ ” He exploded. _“_ ARROGANT ANGEL. IS THE UNIVERSE SMALL? ASK THE PATHETIC CREATURE COWERING AT OUR FEET, ASK HIM IF THE LENGTH OF HIS SUFFERING WAS SMALL.”

Death didn't know why he'd come. He didn't understand why it hurt to tear off the last shred of idolatry that had shrouded his Father. In the end Death was so like Dean, he'd wanted so badly to believe.

“The things you make. They possess such beauty. Such grace. And yet you... You're...”

“YOU TALK OF MY CRUELTY. WHY DID YOU FORCE YOUR CHERISHED HUMAN TO CHOOSE BETWEEN HIS BROTHERS, CASTIEL? DO NOT HIDE BEHIND HYPOCRISY. NOT WITH ME. WE WHO WIELD THE FATE OF THIS WORLD, WE ARE NOT CRUEL WHEN WE IMPART LESSONS ON OUR LESSERS.”

“Because he didn't love me back,” Death answered without thinking.

God's impassive expression did not change. “WHAT?”

“It wasn't... It was jealousy. Cruelty. I punished Dean because he didn't love me anymore.”

God sighed in a pantomime of fatherly disappointment. “IT SEEMS YOU ARE SET IN DISAPPOINTING ME.”

“Is it possible that you'd hound one of your creatures because he stopped loving you?” Death pointed at the prostrate figure on the ground. “Is that it? You did this because he dared to care for humanity as you instructed?”

“YOUR CHILDISH SELF-AGGRANDIZEMENT NEVER CEASES TO AMAZE ME.”

“Then _why_?” he screamed.

Dean's lips thinned in displeasure. “I NEVER BROUGHT YOU BACK, CASTIEL.”

“What?” All of Death's bitterly held beliefs spun on their axis.

“THERE ARE... FORCES OUTSIDE OF MY INFLUENCE WHICH CANNOT PERMIT YOU TO DIE.” God grudgingly explained. “IT IS AN IMPORTANT CHARACTERISTIC FOR DEATH TO POSSESS. THIS IS WHY YOUR ROLE SUITS YOU SO WELL.”

And suddenly his curse was no longer a punishment, a higher being tearing feathers from a broken wing. It was a cosmic inevitability. He couldn't convince his Father to reverse it, or erase His will by reaping Him. Death was held in place by a nameless power that pervaded the entire universe, bigger than him, possibly bigger than God, and how could he flee from that?

“Am I... was I _ever_ an angel?” he stammered. “What was I, in the beginning? Your son or your brother? It's easier to gain the allegiance of your killer if you convince him he is an anonymous soldier in your servitude.”

“I CREATED EVERYTHING,” God clarified patiently, as if this should be obvious and unquestionable. “THERE WAS NONE BUT ME IN THE BEGINNING. THIS IS WHY I COMMAND AND YOU OBEY, MY SON. MY WORK SHALL END WHEN _I_ DECLARE IT TO BE DONE. AND SOON IT BEGINS ANEW. CASTIEL BECOMES DEATH, AND YOU BECOME CASTIEL, AND THE ELEGANT LOOP OF THE UNIVERSE SHALL CONTINUE AS IT ALREADY DID FOR MANY ITERATIONS.”

Not a loop, then. A spiral? A helix? God changed His narrative as was convenient and glossed over the contradictions like they didn't exist. “You're lying,” he accused tentatively.

God scoffed. “AND HOW WOULD YOU KNOW?”

“Because you're afraid of dying.”

The imperceptible widening of God's eyes made Him appear just a bit like the real Dean, then. It was certainly reassuring to see definite proof that He could feel emotion. Death might have felt pity for Him a few billion years ago, but not now.

“You want everything to love you and you are afraid to die. You scrapped the world because it chose chaos over you. If we rewind to the start, when your creations knew only to worship their Lord, you can fulfill both of your longings. I understand that.”

“YOU FOOL. I AM SO FAR ABOVE YOUR UNDERSTANDING-” God stopped Himself mid-sentence. His human eyes held Death's gaze and then -

And then He looked down. They all looked down eventually.

It made a sad sort of sense that God would turn out to be as lost as the rest of them, assembling playthings in the hopes that they'd devote Him a smidgen of devotion. After all, Death had turned out to be nothing but the battered shell of an angel.

“You can try to turn Death back into Castiel, and Castiel back into Death. You can watch your creation spin like a child's carousel. That's your prerogative. I'll fight you, of course, and I'm afraid I can't predict who'll come out on top. Or, you can let me reap you. Humans are usually mature enough to accept their demise, I'm sure you'll show the same grace.”

“I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT DYING,” God admitted, his gaze still down-turned. “I POSSESS ALL KNOWLEDGE OF THIS UNIVERSE, BUT NOT THE VOID BEYOND.”

“That's one thing you have in common with the rest of us, Father.” Death attempted to smile, and managed a wry quirk of the lip. “Frankly, I've no idea either. I only know when your time has run out, and how to welcome you to the other side.”

And God, miraculously, smiled back. It didn't quite look human, for God had not made it reach His eyes, but it seemed an honest smile instead of a pale lie. Suddenly, Dean's face sloughed off. God ripped his intricate disguise and showed off his true appearance, an immense thing indescribable to human senses and barely within Death's own comprehension.

God waited for a silent eternity before He bowed His glorious head. And Death felt smaller than he'd ever felt as God's immeasurable mass slowly kneeled before him. There would be no more creation in this world.

He was truly the reaper of all.

No one had ever explained the true nature of reaping to Death, probably because no one knew. Death had assumed that all the souls and spirits he sheltered in his embrace left nothing behind.

He found that it wasn't quite true.

When Death felt an urge to fly for the first time in eons, he found that he could. To his surprise, he could have anything he wanted. The fundamental powers of creation and destruction, human and demonic magic, angelic grace and pagan artifice, were within the possession of a single entity. Death guessed that this combination had not happened before.

He unfolded his wings, and they rippled with agility and strength. That was good. He had a lot of work to do. Reaping the rest of existence might take a long while, even for him.

Galaxies spread under his wings, and he soared.

 


	7. And Beyond

_“I wanted to pour the cheapest, foulest scotch that money can buy on the grave. It's tradition. But I'll admit, this seems like a better idea.” The earth on Dean's hands turned into mud against the condensation of his soda. He wiped them absentmindedly on his jeans. “Do you think the greens'll take? It's all salt and bones under there.”_

_Sam shrugged and laid down his trowel. He wiped the sweat on his forehead with a flannel sleeve. “I've never done any gardening either. Why're you asking me?”_

_The aluminum can felt deliciously cold and wet against Castiel's palm. He settled on the spot next to Dean's languid body, the car hood under his back warmed by a crack of sunlight that filtered through the branches. “This isn't beer,” he noted pleasantly. The foam bubbled sweetly against his tongue._

_“Yeah, rootbeer's not actual beer. There's no alcohol in it.” Dean nodded toward the little wooden cross. “Bobby didn't like us to booze up before driving.”_

_“What color do you think the flowers will be?” asked Sam. He poked curiously at the green clumps of hydrangea blossoms. They seemed vibrant and new against the rich brown of the fertilizer._

_“They're supposed to be pink unless the soil is acidic,” Dean recited. He leaned back against the car. His little finger brushed briefly against Castiel's knee. “Bobby was pissy but I don't think his corpse is actually made of vinegar, so most likely they will be pink.”_

_Sam bitchfaced. “That's disgusting.” He patted the earth around the plants one last time and admired his handiwork with a pleased grin. “You know what, I think Bobby would've liked it. He'd call us sentimental idjits but he'd be pretty damn flattered.”_

_“And it's better than wasting a bottle of scotch. Circle of life, and all that. Rotten old men turning into flowers.”_

_Pretending to take a long sip from his not-beer, Dean stole a glance at Castiel. Cas openly stared back._

_Then seemingly out of nowhere, Dean muttered, “It'd be nice if the flowers turn out blue. Blue's pretty.”_

_Sam nodded knowingly. “Yeah, Dean. Blue is very pretty.” He chuckled to a joke that he didn't say out loud._

_On the drive to Lebanon, Castiel decided that he wanted to plant a garden. He should ask Sam and Dean about it tomorrow, before he forgot._

He couldn't avoid it anymore. After devouring every other material shred of the universe, he owed Castiel at least an audience.

He'd saved the hardest for last.

“Castiel,” he said.

Castiel did not hear him.

' _Castiel,_ ' he repeated with the uttermost gentleness he could muster in his fatigue.

The miserable thing's consciousness latched onto the unknown presence like a lifeline. ' _There's someone left? I'm not imagining you?_ ' Hope reawakened the tissue of Jimmy's body, and Castiel tried to open his stiffened eyes.

“Yes. We're both still here. Though not for much longer.”

The angel blinked in recognition. “Oh, you're finally here. I've been dying forever. Over and over again...”

“I think I can make it stick this time.”

Castiel managed to get ahold of the bottom of Death's coat. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“Don't thank me. I couldn't save Sam and Dean.”

The broken thing did not question why Death of all people would bring up the Winchesters. Castiel's entire mind had become blood and fire and blue jeans. Sam and Dean were the only things that still existed.

“I couldn’t either,” the angel choked out painfully. “I couldn’t save them either. I destroy everything I touch.”

Death grabbed Castiel's hand and pulled him to his feet. Castiel wobbled and clung to Death's shoulders, but he stayed upright.

“It's over, Castiel. You can rest,” Death promised him. “You can finally rest.”

In the grand scale of things, it is strange that Castiel fell in love with Dean Winchester. Funny how those things fall in place.

Four years old, and watching his house go in flames with a heavy bundle of cotton and warmth in his arms, not knowing it would become his entire world someday. Powerless to stop his father from falling apart. He doesn’t pause to wonder why he consoles his father rather than the other way around. His shoulders crushed by the weight of his own guilt and blame, his young bones misshapen and warped by the responsibilities pulling him down. Dad is unfixable, and Sammy deserves better. Both are his fault, he thinks. His skin is a patchwork of calluses, bruises, scars. It knows nothing but scratchy motel linen and cheap soap, yellowing trickles of water groaning out of decrepit plumbing, salt and gunpowder rubbed so deep into his pores that it becomes another layer of armor. His father’s hands on mom’s waist as she powdered her face, “Why don’t you like your freckles, darling? I think they make you even cuter.” The hellhounds claw through his skin like paper, like nothing.

His coffin cannot contain him for long. He emerges from hell a bit cracked, unwilling to face the miracle of his staying human at all. He ignores the black-eyed mutation he almost became by filling himself with soft flesh and strong drink and loud music. He was always afraid of his own perceived darkness. He finds excuses to prove himself right. He helplessly watches the bundle of cotton and warmth he held against his chest drift away, tainted with demon blood, dark power at his fingertips, hopefully off to save the world. “What’s the point of saving the world if I lose you,” he doesn’t say. He grows accustomed to losing everything. He keeps fighting anyway.

He meets angels – his first instinct is to stab – and stubbornly refuses to believe in them no matter what the ashes of his mother whisper in his ears. That will come later.

He is a tangle of paradoxes. A faithful non-believer, a selfless murderer, a hell-stained wretch who is mourned throughout the entirety of time. He is painfully, impossibly, magnificently human.

He is no more than a white dust mote hung ephemerally in a ray of sunlight, for how short a while he gleamed.

At the end of all living things, after all matter disappeared in one final flash, after time whimpered to a halt, after humanity, demons, angels, and earth itself were but a blink in the stretch of existence, after God finally allowed Himself to be reaped, and Death had seen so much that he barely recalled his name, Castiel still loved him. From the very beginning to the very end, through the vast, dizzying, cruel eddies of time, Castiel’s love for Dean Winchester remained. And perhaps the universe understood that this was the fixed point, a stone around which it flowed. Castiel changed. His love never did.

So in a pinprick of a moment inside the folds of eternities, a tiny angel fell in love with an even tinier human and loved him with the whole of his being for as long as there was a world. How utterly unsurprising, in the end, that this would be the one thing he truly chose.

Because of course he would. Of course.

He was surprised to find that reaping Castiel did not kill him. So much for God's all-powerful paradoxes. Existence flowed on, bigger and sturdier than any one entity's actions.

Still, he supposed it was all over. No more things to reap. Or maybe Death kept them contained in his being. Even at the end, he knew so little.

Infinitely gently, he tried to pull a flawed little echo from the swirling mass of everything within him. He was not adept at creation, made to destroy and reap rather than build, but he managed it through force of will. After all, it was a minuscule, inconsequential thing to assemble. He only needed to ladle out a few droplets of soul.

Dean Winchester awoke for the first time in six billion years.

His spirit wavered, fragile and clumsily assembled, but _him_. Completely him. Down to the ridges of Enochian on his ribs, the sadness encrusted in his spirit, and the constellation of wounds and scars that never found a chance to heal. The shell was gone, buried in the soil of a planet blinked out of existence, but the soul remained for now.

Death let his eyes go blue.

"Cas?" Dean whispered, his voice barely a breath. “Cas, are you God?"

"I have no idea what I am anymore," Death, or Cas, or maybe God replied. He was acutely aware of the stretches of blank silence surrounding them, but his voice did not carry. His words belonged only to Dean.

The soul stared at the surrounding void where the universe once resided. "Yeah. Kind of pointless to argue about labels when the whole freaking world’s imploded."

Dean chuckled thinly at his own comment.

Death said nothing.

_You left me. And worlds bloomed, stars died, the earth spun on again uncaring, I gained more power than anyone should wield, and I never stopped loving you from the beginning until this very moment._

"It wasn’t enough," Death confessed, his mouth oddly dry. The words tumbled out with the clumsy weight of many lifetimes. "I loved you. I still love you. This entire time I've waited to see you again."

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Dean exhaled softly, tugging lightly on the collar of Death's tan trenchcoat. Souls didn't need to breathe, but humans did. Dean did. They needed to breathe to stay alive. “I’m really not worth all that fuss, you know. Why didn’t you move on?”

“It was always you. It always had to be you. There could be no one else because I chose you.”

The corners of Dean's eyes crinkled with warmth. "You make me sound like a pokemon.”

“Um?” Death rummaged in the well of information in his old mind until he landed on a yellow animated creature. He grinned when he found it. “I understood that reference, Dean.”

Then a vague shadow of a soul and a strange mishmash of angel and God giggled together at the end of the universe. Death laughed and laughed, from the relief and from the absurdity and from the innumerable years he'd wasted waiting for exactly this, and he laughed until he tasted salt on his lips.

Dean traced the wet line of Jimmy Novak’s cheekbone with the pad of his thumb. “Are you crying? Dude, I’ve never seen you cry.”

 _No_ , he wanted to reply, _angels don’t cry. Death doesn't cry. I don't..._

“You know what, Cas? Let it out. You deserved more than this bullshit. Maybe we both did."

The brittle, incomplete, insignificant echo who had been destroyed billions of years ago cradled the almighty being against his shoulder. Castiel buried his nose into the fabric of the puffy jacket and stifled a bark of wet laughter. Dean’s soul still wore the same layered plaid, even at the end of all things. The soul’s fragile form vacillated with every movement, with every word, and yet he was the most solid thing Castiel had felt ever since… since Dean's tiny heartbeat in his hand, a secret buried under concrete and cotton sheets, a fluttering miracle, the most precious thing in the world pounding blood against the lines of Castiel’s palm and the expanses of fragile skin keeping it alive and good.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have brought you back,” he humbly admitted. He finally understood that he was capable of miracles. “I've found that nothing good happens when people get dragged back.”

"It’s okay. You missed me because I’m awesome."

Castiel nodded. "You're very awesome.”

“And you already know I can't stay,” Dean added solemnly, intertwining their fingers and kissing them.

“Yeah,” he breathed. He felt pain roll down his cheeks, and with it loss, or relief, or emotions he'd never quite understood. “I guess I needed to say goodbye. I had an eternity to live through and you were gone, and it wasn’t fair. But now that it’s all over… I wanted this one selfish thing, finally. I'm sorry."

“Stop beating yourself up. Look. Life’s been… a _huge_ bitch to you, but at least we've got this, yeah? We got our three days. We’ve got right now.” Dean smoothed his calloused fingers through the dark hair as if they were both made for it, kissed the exhausted eyelids covering the blue. “It was my last wish, did you know that?” he confessed. “I was shooting leviathans in the face and I kept thinking, 'dear God, if you could get off your ass just this once, please let me see Castiel one more time.’ So there we go, maybe you _are_ God and you heard my prayer and I’ve been right all along.”

“I don't want to be God.”

The corners of his mouth quirked up in wonder. "Ah, Cas." It sounded like an apology. “Why are you so... Why were you always so... like this. Just like this.”

“No, I changed too much Dean. You stayed dead to me, and I broke. Neither of us came back from the fire.”

Dean laid translucent hands on both sides of Castiel's face. They were worn hands, the only part of his body that had seemed remotely old in the entire duration of their friendship, and Castiel loved those hands. They showed how much longer Dean had lived than anyone expected.

“Buddy, you reaped God because he was a douche,” Dean said, laughing. “This whole fucked up world might get some peace of mind because _you_ shook things up. And you still love me. Clearly you're the same crazy little guy in a trenchcoat where it counts. God can't change the... nugget of everything kind inside you. Nothing can change that.”

“Nugget?”

“Yeah.”

Castiel instinctively straightened his back, a residual habit from leading the reapers for so long. "If... if I put an end to this, which I don't have the authority to do anyway-”

“Hey, come on,” Dean interrupted raspily, earnestly, like he carried the weight of everything they'd once fought for in his words. “You lived an eternity in the mud with the rest of us and God sat on a beach chair sippin' a damn piña colada. You always tried to help when you could. I think you deserve way more of a say than that asshole father of yours. So if you think it's time, then it's time. We'll follow you to the other side.”

Apparently the fate of everything pivoted around the opinion of a long-dead Kansas boy, and that seemed about right. Dean had made at least as many mistakes as he did, had suffered just as pointlessly in the span of his short life.

“What do you think will happen afterwards, Dean?"

"Hopefully nothing. Or goddammit, what if there’s a new world? Maybe a better one, even. Not that good things usually happen, but I think something somewhere owes it to us."

Dean had always wanted to believe in his family, in heaven, in him. Surely his faith deserved to be rewarded at least once.

"And you think we'll be in this new world?"

"I'm just a snarky amoeba, what the hell do I know. But... I honestly kind of hope not."

"Me either.” He rested his lips on Dean's forehead. It was hardly a kiss so much as the reassurance of physical closeness. Of not being alone just yet. “We all deserve to rest, I think."

From the stubborn set of Dean’s face, he could tell that he was ready. “Good. Let's get this show on the road.”

The little soul cracked his knuckles and crinkled his eyes into one last smile. Cas was ready as well.

And so he buried his wet face into the faint but familiar smell of Dean's short hair, thought he almost heard the rhythmic lullaby of a still beating pulse, and finally, _finally,_ let Dean go.

The love of Cas's long life felt as light as a falling petal, as a dust mote dancing in the sun. His delicate soul unrolled tenderly, weaving back into all of creation, a drop of beauty diluted in the dawn.

“Hey. Can you still hear me?” Cas said gently. “If we still exist, if there’s anything left of us after this, I will love you, Dean Winchester. As long as any part of me still is, I think the universe will remember.”

Dean's face, now barely corporeal, filled his entire field of vision. "I don’t give a shit about the universe as long as you remember, Cas. That's good enough.”

Dean kissed him so lightly that he couldn't feel a thing. The flecks of hazel and green in Dean's eyes were the last things he saw before salty water inundated his vision, blinding him completely. How strange that he would cry so easily now, when he clutched everything that had ever existed inside of him. Maybe he cried for them all. The naive angels. The impetuous humans. The monsters and demons, the undeserving and the unredeemed. The creator, lonely and afraid. And always, always, for Dean Winchester.

"Goodbye, Dean."

As Dean died one last time, he allowed all that remained to follow suit. The balance of existence, particles and antiparticles, erupting inside him like a kiss, like bursts of freckles under his lips beating to the tempo of Dean's heart. And as he was consumed bit by bit along with the universe, he stopped remembering, stopped knowing, stopped understanding. He did not need to understand, only to watch over what he'd done. Soon he would be gone too. Freedom at last, and maybe even a bit of peace.

A millisecond later, or perhaps it was an eternity later – space no longer existed and the notion of time was meaningless – in the blank slate that encompassed everything, something shifted.

It was tiny, insignificant, almost nothing, and yet he was almost certain he felt something move in the void. A cog coming loose. A flash of creation.

And maybe it’s something better. Maybe it’s something new.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the universe remembers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For S.


End file.
